by Jim Kokoris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001
And it has one immortal moment: Uncle Frank’s sullen declaration that “By nature, Greeks are depressed people . . . . We’re...
Winsomeness and whimsy are laid on with a trowel in this nevertheless quite likable debut about a suburban Illinois family transformed by outrageous misfortune, and even more outrageous good fortune.
While Theo Pappas, a 60-ish university history prof (and Civil War specialist) and his two sons are grieving the loss of the boys’ mother, Theo wins $190 million in a state lottery. Twelve-year-old Teddy (who narrates) begins mentally spending the money his father can’t seem to deal with, and younger brother Tommy begins exhibiting increasingly deranged behavior, while the world beats a path to the Pappases’ door, begging contributions for innumerable causes and crackpot schemes. Unmarried Aunt Bess (a wonderful comic character) joins the family, followed by seedy-looking Uncle Frank, a fast-talking producer of “genre” movies (which feature “vampire cheerleaders” and “Celebrity Shewolves”), hoping to elude the loan sharks on his trail. It isn’t all as amusing as it should be, because too many scenes are unshaped and unfunny, and Kokoris doesn’t know when to modulate the appearances of such initially promising figures as rapacious Gloria Wilcott, the bosomy neighbor who aims to capture Theo, or the campy leech known as Sylvanius (“the vampire who starred in . . . Uncle Frank’s movies”)—a cross between Quentin Crisp and Ed Wood, Jr. The novel also flounders in an overextended account of a cheesy reenactment of the Battle of Bull Run (in which Theo is persuaded to impersonate “Stonewall” Jackson), and in the subplot involving Bobby Lee Anderson, the redneck stalker whose real relationship to the Pappases will not surprise any reader past adolescence. For all that, Teddy and especially five-year-old Tommy are vivid, engaging characters, and the story comes to life whenever Kokoris indulges his flair for farcical malapropism and misstatement (“This all reminds me of a Norman Rockwell movie,” etc.).
And it has one immortal moment: Uncle Frank’s sullen declaration that “By nature, Greeks are depressed people . . . . We’re not all Zorba.” Now that’s funny.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-27479-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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by Jim Kokoris
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by Jim Kokoris
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
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