This book’s strong, sometimes-insightful focus on its protagonist makes it a definite improvement on the author’s prior...
Benacre’s (Easter, Smoke and Mirrors, 2014) short story collection trails an Irishman who’s been training most of his life to carry out a planned terrorist strike in London.
In the author’s previous novel, Michael McCann was an Irish Republican Army Cleanskin (akin to a sleeper terrorist with no criminal background) stationed in London to help launch a bombing on Easter Friday. This collection of chronological stories, starting in 1968, follows his life from his birth to the 2016 attack. Provisional IRA leader Frank O’Neill courts 15-year-old Michael for the cause, eventually sending him to Libya and later to Afghanistan to train as a soldier. Frank keeps Michael “under wraps” until the IRA makes plans for an assault on such a grand scale that they believe it will finally unite Ireland. The stories here are comparable to chapters in a novel; the tale of Michael in Afghanistan fighting with the mujahedeen against the Russians, for instance, is comprised of four stories that make up a single narrative. As a result, readers will likely want to read the stories sequentially, like a novel (as the author recommends), to subvert potential confusion. Some of them, including the one-page “Murder by Suicide,” could have been amalgamated with others to avoid repetitiveness. Michael is generally a cold character—a calculated killer who avoids genuine relationships with the women he chooses to bed. But a series of first-person accounts of Michael’s childhood generate sympathy and showcase Benacre’s knack for description. “A Picture to Keep” is a standout: 4-year-old Michael explores a bomb’s devastating aftermath, frantically searching for his mother and siblings; its simple passages (“I was bleeding from somewhere, from everywhere it seemed”) offer dynamic, harrowing imagery. The book’s historical backdrop, too, is first-rate; Michael’s life, for example, is affected by the ongoing Troubles, the war in Afghanistan, and even 9/11, ultimately leading to the Provisional IRA’s disarmament and Frank’s forming a resurgent version of the terrorist group. A later story, “Morning Tea,” zeroes in on Patricia Whelan, another Cleanskin, who will hopefully have a collection (or novel) of her own.
This book’s strong, sometimes-insightful focus on its protagonist makes it a definite improvement on the author’s prior outing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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