As complex as the disorder it seeks to explore; makes for a frequently disquieting read.
A fragmented debut novel about life lived under a fog of schizophrenia from author Harnisch.
Benjamin J. Schreiber has a number of problems, not the least of which being that he tried to rob a bank with a cellphone. Mentally ill, though protected by a powerful father and a trust fund, Ben finds himself in therapy instead of jail. While in therapy, Ben explores his alter ego, a masochist named Georgie Gust. Much like Ben, Georgie depends on wealthy parents; a state of affairs that he uses to explore all types of humiliation and kinky sex. After Georgie hires a neighbor named Claudia to torture him in new and inventive ways, he succumbs to a type of twisted love only his peculiar mind and circumstances could produce. Book Two drifts back in time and finds a high school-aged Georgie attending a prestigious private school in New England. Afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome, Georgie has a hard time making friends. When Claudia, the girlfriend of a popular lacrosse player, takes an interest in him, it naturally causes problems. Following chapters become yet more disordered, with names and afflictions repeated, though the circumstances tend to vary. It’s 1987, and the reader sees Ben’s suburban New York family home being remodeled while his unhappy mother goes about her private demise. Later Georgie marries a woman named Clio, though he longs for a waitress named Claudia. At one point, Jonathan Harnisch introduces himself as a mentally ill artist in a string of beat-like sentences: “Thoughts. Thoughts bombard my head, my brain. My psyche.” What is the reader to make of these worlds of obsessions, disorders and well-to-do young men? Those looking for an anchor in this swirling sea will have difficulty finding one. Taken as a fictionalized account of a disparate mind, the book succeeds—although not without moments of melodrama and repetition. Claudia and Georgie’s teenage relationship often proves no more exciting than an after-school TV special, but at another point in the book, when the torturer-for-hire Claudia must find new levels of debasement to explore, Georgie’s pain is very real and not for the faint of heart.
As complex as the disorder it seeks to explore; makes for a frequently disquieting read.Pub Date: May 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499350722
Page Count: 804
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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