An ambitious novel whose frantic pace and quixotic nature obscure its plot.
A New Mexico spy and her friends stumble upon a murderous plan involving a dangerous new weapon in Taylor’s (Let There Be Lite, 2014, etc.) novel in verse.
Taylor’s unique novel, written almost entirely in rhyming poetry, is largely narrated by a character also named Joe Taylor (more affectionately known as Our Beloved Writer). His muse, Trixie, aka “Dixie” or “Pixie,” reads his pages and offers up effervescent, sexually charged critiques. His story is about four friends, their families, and associates in Los Alamos, New Mexico (“the town that spawned the atom bomb”). Dockworker Hank Riser has just bought a new, two-story rancho, and he’s anxious for his girlfriend, Carmen Brown, to move in. Hank has an inkling that she’s a spy; as it happens, she’s investigating a cartel that deals in science instead of drugs. Somehow, the tech for a new weapon, the “G-string gun,” has been stolen by the cartel and is being used to kill off young women. Along with friends Dave McDowell and Lorrie Taylor, Carmen and Hank aim to crack the case, helped along by a wacky “Morguemeister” and his medical examiner/assistant. Some shady characters drop off tickets to a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello in Santa Fe, which may hold the key to solving the case. Taylor’s story in rhyme is definitely an adventurous narrative in terms of structure and style, although it works best when the action is more grounded. Joe’s scenes with Trixie are the most helpful for understanding a narrative that’s a bit of a riddle. Carmen is an intriguing character, tough and determined, though she feels underdeveloped, as chapters sometimes end in a cursory manner (“No sense in ending this chapt. with a turd”) before they make complete sense. The playfully vulgar and sometimes-witty story does have a plot, but it’s often buried under tangents, asides, and extraneous dialogue. Acronyms and abbreviations for characters’ names also tend to be confusing; the helpful character list at the end should have been placed at the beginning.
An ambitious novel whose frantic pace and quixotic nature obscure its plot.Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944697-27-3
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is. King presents us with the riddle of a small Maine town that has been deserted overnight. Where did all the down-Easters go? Matter of fact, they're still there but they only get up at sundown. . . for a warm drink. . . .Ben Mears, a novelist, returns to Salem's Lot (pop. 1319), the hometown he hasn't seen since he was four years old, where he falls for a young painter who admires his books (what happens to her shouldn't happen to a Martian). Odd things are manifested. Someone rents the ghastly old Marsten mansion, closed since a horrible double murder-suicide in 1939; a dog is found impaled on a spiked fence; a healthy boy dies of anemia in one week and his brother vanishes. Ben displays tremendous calm considering that you're left to face a corpse that sits up after an autopsy and sinks its fangs into the coroner's neck. . . . Vampirism, necrophilia, et dreadful alia rather overplayed by the author of Carrie (1974).
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1975
ISBN: 0385007515
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
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