Noogie’s shine dims pretty quickly.
This slapstick caper novel can’t sustain the energy of its zany setup.
Knipfel (The Buzzing, 2003, etc.) plainly enjoyed himself creating the character of Ned “Noogie” Krapczak, a hapless schlub who somehow amasses a small fortune by skimming from the ATM machines that he services. Reportedly inspired by an actual crime, the novel has some fun with Noogie, who hates his nickname but prefers it to the common mispronunciation of his last name (“Crap Sack”), who lives with his bellowing mother and his Siamese cat, Dillinger, and who has no life beyond the movies that obsess him. One day on his New York rounds, he accidentally misplaces a $20 bill. When it isn’t discovered, he starts to take more and more, until he has stolen almost $5 million without arousing any suspicion from the home office in Fort Lauderdale. At about the 50 page mark, Noogie learns that he’s been discovered, and he and his cat hit the road, abandoning his mother. Unfortunately, Knipfel has no more idea than his protagonist where to head from here, as both Noogie and the reader quickly find themselves “getting a little bored with this ‘on the lam’ business.” Noogie thinks his escape will make his life as exciting as a movie, but nobody appears to be chasing him. Whether out of ineptitude or desperation, he seems to do everything he can to draw the sort of attention that might result in his capture, leaving a $40 tip for a two-buck meal, spinning preposterous stories about his background, trading his van in for one exactly like it (with the same plates), heading for Florida where he knows they’re looking for him. The novel’s second half (following an “intermission” of 16 pages) features a significant plot twist that throws the narrative chronology out of whack and makes the reader care even less about Noogie than before.
Noogie’s shine dims pretty quickly.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-75351-283-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Virgin Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rollicking first novel from British journalist Hornby that manages to make antic hay of a young (barely) man's hopeless resolve not to come of age. Rob Fleming is the sort of precocious loser whose life has gone so unaccountably wrong that some deep romantic grief must be invoked to explain it. ``The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking,'' according to Rob, ``are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.'' As a case in point, the 35-year-old Rob not only listens to these songs himself but peddles themas the founder and proprietor of Championship Vinyl, a seedy vintage-record store in a quiet back alley of North London. Business is hardly booming these days, and the shop would have gone under long ago but for Rob's lawyer- girlfriend Laura, who has propped it up time and again with cash from her own very ample pool. Once she dumps Rob, however, everything is suddenly on the verge of collapsefiscally and emotionallyand Rob is forced to ask himself how he landed in such a mess. Naturally, he has no idea, so he proceeds to look up his ex-girlfriendsall the way back to high schooland ask them why things never worked out. As a pilgrimage, Rob's quest bears more resemblance to Monty Python than Chaucer, and his own inability to put two and two together somehow endears him to the very women whose affections he seems least able to requite. Reality bludgeons him in the end, and he succeeds, as the plot is spun, in drawing a few morals that surprise him by their simplicity and point toward a happy endingor at least a second chance. Fast, fun, and remarkably deft: a sharp-edged portrait that manages at once to be vicious, generous, and utterly good-natured.
Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1995
ISBN: 1-57322-016-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A strange, subtle, and haunting novel.
A financier's Ponzi scheme unravels to disastrous effect, revealing the unexpected connections among a cast of disparate characters.
How did Vincent Smith fall overboard from a container ship near the coast of Mauritania, fathoms away from her former life as Jonathan Alkaitis' pretend trophy wife? In this long-anticipated follow-up to Station Eleven (2014), Mandel uses Vincent's disappearance to pick through the wreckage of Alkaitis' fraudulent investment scheme, which ripples through hundreds of lives. There's Paul, Vincent's half brother, a composer and addict in recovery; Olivia, an octogenarian painter who invested her retirement savings in Alkaitis' funds; Leon, a former consultant for a shipping company; and a chorus of office workers who enabled Alkaitis and are terrified of facing the consequences. Slowly, Mandel reveals how her characters struggle to align their stations in life with their visions for what they could be. For Vincent, the promise of transformation comes when she's offered a stint with Alkaitis in "the kingdom of money." Here, the rules of reality are different and time expands, allowing her to pursue video art others find pointless. For Alkaitis, reality itself is too much to bear. In his jail cell, he is confronted by the ghosts of his victims and escapes into "the counterlife," a soothing alternate reality in which he avoided punishment. It's in these dreamy sections that Mandel's ideas about guilt and responsibility, wealth and comfort, the real and the imagined, begin to cohere. At its heart, this is a ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical. How far will Alkaitis go to deny responsibility for his actions? And how quickly will his wealth corrupt the ambitions of those in proximity to it? In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure.
A strange, subtle, and haunting novel.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-52114-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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