Best for hopeless romantics.
In this debut novel, a college professor and his former student conduct a slow romance fueled by his poetry.
After a present-day prefatory first chapter, the novel—told in alternating first-person narrations—turns back 10 years to the fateful meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona, of Peter DuBois, 30, and his English 201 student, Elaine Emerson, 20. He’s immediately drawn to her vibrancy and blue eyes and they begin talking after class. Both appreciate Jane Austen’s refined sensibility; both adore the movie Shakespeare in Love. Though they find each other alluring, she intends to stay a virgin until marriage, and Peter wants her to be “unencumbered.” They settle into a tender but platonic relationship, “a magnetic confluence of two souls now merged to one,” sometimes so deep that they can hear each other’s thoughts. They share snuggles and kisses on romantic get-togethers; Peter writes her love poetry; he asks her to marry him. Elaine agrees, but not yet: “I so want to enjoy us now while we’re as free and wild as summer’s soft rambling winds.” But the strains of school and work, and the imagined difficulties of marriage (“Two children? Good-bye medical career”), separate them. At 30, Elaine is ready to date—but no man compares to Peter. Can the stars align for them at last? In his debut novel, Mazur presents two people so given to high-flown rhapsody that they, and their relationship, rarely seem convincing. A six-month separation, for example, is described as “losing each other for eons in another dimension.” Dialogue is often lecture-y: “To love the beautiful within, Elaine, is to seek love of soul, that which cannot be seen and is immortal.” At the same time, attitudes about the body are often giggly and unsophisticated, with frequent mentions of going “commando.” The book is given to risibly overpraising Peter, whether for his poetry (“absolutely astonishing”) or his bratwurst: “That he was a master sausage maker was quite surprising….Where did one get the time for all this accomplishment?”
Best for hopeless romantics.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2019
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
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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