Read this book for the vivid imagery and sharp dialogue. Read it for the spot-on characterizations. But if you want to care...
A well-written tale of family dysfunction that’s sure to depress the reader from beginning to end.
Narrator Mark Barr doesn’t much like his family and hasn’t been back to Alma, West Virginia, for more than a decade. Then his oldest brother, Steve, dies of a heart attack at age 45. Mark returns to find his father as hateful as ever, his mother as weak and unpleasant, and his other brother, Greg, as disagreeable. The family plans no funeral, no memorial for Steve, who is said to have been mentally ill. So what to do about Steve’s remains: urn or grave? That is the plot. Steve had begged Mark, “Don’t forget me, bro,” and simply wanted to be buried next to Grandpa Roy. But Dad, who has contempt for his entire family, insists on cremation and on placing the ashes in an unmarked urn to remain inside the house. The issue becomes a battle of wills between Mark and Dad, with Mom and Greg largely on the sidelines. Vivid descriptions help set the mood and redeem the story: “Baloney-pink rugs spread across bulges in the tile.” “Steve—bloated, grungy, and depressed in life—would look his best dead, too.” Mark’s life away from “home” has been no prize, either. He and his girlfriend are not in love but seem too lazy to break up, even though he has struck her at least once. The fundamental problem with the book is that there is no one to sympathize with, barring Steve, who’s dead. Mark and his old man both need swift kicks in the butt, but Mom won’t do it. Greg has a lawnmower and a huge truck tire in his kitchen, though, so there’s that going for him.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62288-078-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Stephen F. Austin State University Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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