Shallow titillation. What might have been an exposé of the 1990s is instead a forgettable indulgence in them.
An unambitious meander through the life of an entirely drab British office worker, in fourth-novelist McCabe’s US debut.
Ian Gillick is a ’90s child of England denied his right to boring routine when his girlfriend, Sue, leaves him. His officemate is a Trekkie bloke, obsessed with television while longing to be more like Ian, for whom “other people were merely a facility which enabled him to compete with the all-consuming boredom which tormented his consciousness.” We follow Ian as he visits porn stores, is threatened by men with menacing tattoos, takes odd pills instead of the more simple alcohol, and acts basically like a wanker. And Archie the officemate is truly strange as he indulges in the many available Trek spin-offs, but even Ian can describe things only in terms of movies he’s seen. And when, like a movie, life suddenly starts to get more interesting, with guys beginning to chase Ian and people actually leaving messages on his answering machine, it surely must speak to Ian’s popularity. And yet even so, though “he had never felt suicidal, he had also never felt as low as this.” Which way will this crazy life turn? Will Ian get mixed up in a scam to steal electronic money, or simply continue miring himself in dreams of Sue? Will things (improbably) lead to violence? Will Sue reappear? And wouldn’t we be happier if Ian had just been left to his comfortable routine—since we all know (don’t we?) that “the thing to do was reduce life to its bare, sun-bleached bones. Do only the things that need doing and do them without thought. Swim through life like a stickleback.”
Shallow titillation. What might have been an exposé of the 1990s is instead a forgettable indulgence in them.Pub Date: March 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-552-99984-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Black Swan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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