An odd, if oddly compelling, summarization of a forgotten writer’s works.
Schwartz (Maarten Maartens Rediscovered, 2015) offers a second volume summarizing the fiction of a Dutch author.
Though he has since faded from memory, Maartens was one of the most popular writers in English at the turn of the 20th century. This volume summarizes his detective novel, The Black-Box Murder (1889), as well as selections from his four volumes of short fiction: Some Women I Have Known (1901), My Poor Relations: Stories of Dutch Peasant Life (1905), The Woman’s Victory (1906), and Brothers All: My Stories of Dutch Peasant Life (1909). Using numerous quotes from the original text, Schwartz recounts Maarten’s tales of duchesses, doting mothers, clever daughters, dysfunctional families, wealthy elites, and country folks. Some of the shorter ones, such as “The Woman’s Victory,” which follows the comic dialogue of a recently married couple on an English train, appear unabridged, allowing the reader a glimpse at the unfiltered work of the writer. Another story presented in its entirety is “Lord Venetia,” a tale about a powerful banker that expresses a sentiment that may strike readers as prophetically contemporary: “He was a great banker. He was a great blackguard. It would not be necessary to say the same thing twice, but that the world is so slow to understand.” As with the previous volume, in which Schwartz gave the same treatment to Maartens’ novels, the reader may question the point of summarizing these stories in detail rather than reprinting them or critiquing them. Schwartz attempts to head off this question in his preface: “Why abridge short stories and not reprint them in full? The main rationale is that today’s readers might not be incentivized enough to read four volumes of short stories in their entirety by a ‘forgotten’ writer, but might read the stories in a condensed form.” As an unusually committed enterprise in reiteration, the reader cannot help but be drawn into the book, which forces (if perhaps inadvertently) a rumination on artistic intent and the nature of storytelling. Even so, one wishes that Schwartz would republish the original works, which would, despite his misgivings, almost certainly find a wider readership than these summaries.
An odd, if oddly compelling, summarization of a forgotten writer’s works.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Willow Manor Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2016
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
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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