AND AGAIN

Name: AND AGAIN
Author: Jessica Chiarella
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1610-0

by Jessica Chiarella ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2016

This is a novel about what it means to be human, with all the flaws and vulnerabilities that implies, and whether we can...

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Following an experimental medical procedure, four patients struggle to resume their pre-illness lives.

Connie, Linda, Hannah, and David were all near death when they were selected for a trial medical program in which their memories are transplanted into healthy clones of their bodies. Previously strangers, the four meet at a support group they attend over the course of a year as they come to terms with their new, now healthy bodies. Connie, a former actress who was once afflicted with AIDS, considers returning to Los Angeles after her five-year illness but realizes her only meaningful relationship is with her blind neighbor. Linda, a mother who was locked inside her paralyzed body for eight years following a car accident, returns home to find her husband and two children have become accustomed to her absence. David, a conservative congressman, attempts to cope with the stress of hiding his new, cloned body from his constituents, as well as the strings he pulled to be accepted into the program, and begins an affair with Hannah, a young artist whose relationship with her husband, Sam, unravels, in part because she can no longer remember how to paint. Chiarella alternates among the four narratives without forcing connections between the characters and skillfully raises questions about how much of one’s identity is rooted within one’s body. One minor drawback for this debut novel is the imbalance of these narratives, as Hannah is the most defined of all the characters, while Connie and Linda never quite feel fully realized. However, Chiarella's engaging writing creates so many haunting moments that readers will find themselves moving quickly through the story, as well as awaiting her next work.

This is a novel about what it means to be human, with all the flaws and vulnerabilities that implies, and whether we can ever truly begin again.

Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1610-0

Page Count: 320

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | DYSTOPIAN FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.