A potent story of a religious community, featuring characters that burst with energy.
The leader of a religious group, increasingly wary of enemies, takes her followers down an uncertain path in Kramer’s (Criminal Decision, 2012) psychological thriller.
In the 1970s, after spending time in an ashram in India, Malkeeya wants to teach the “Cosmic Love” concepts that she’s learned to the world, starting in the United States. There, she slowly gains clusters of followers around the country by advocating harmony and unity—a “Cosmic Oneness.” Then it’s revealed to her in a vision that she’s from Agape Armonia, a Utopian planet where she and her followers will one day spend eternity. Malkeeya advocates free love and pressures her adherents to tithe half or more of what they earn. But she shocks nearly everyone, including her right-hand man, Master Paul, when she splits couples and families among different clusters, believing that such attachments distract from spiritual growth. Malkeeya is also worried about the community’s enemies, especially after she reads a scathing article on Cosmic Love that implies that it’s a cult; the Jonestown deaths are still fresh in the public’s mind, after all. She becomes paranoid, and she plans an alarming way for her followers to protect themselves. Ex-spouses and grandparents of Cosmic Lovers, meanwhile, use the courts to gain custody of some of the community’s children, but tragedy is still on the horizon. Kramer’s somber tale spotlights the first-person viewpoints of three very different characters: Malkeeya, who’s convinced of her message and bizarre origin; Master Paul, her childhood friend who often questions her methods; and young Poppy, who, with her mother and little brother, escapes an abusive household to join Cosmic Love. Paul is a likable voice of reason, and he discovers paternal feelings when Malkeeya relegates him to a kid-laden cluster. In Poppy, the author offers a fine depiction of innocence; her diary entries are filled with rambling sentences and cutesy misspellings, such as “sychologist.” But Malkeeya is the most intriguing figure: a biracial woman who’s cognizant of an intolerant, divided society while also the embodiment of much-desired Oneness.
A potent story of a religious community, featuring characters that burst with energy.Pub Date: May 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5452-1913-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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