An amusing but garrulous bacchanalia of sex, guns, and talking pigs.
In this comic action novel, a former sniper takes on a swarm of mutant hogs in rural Texas.
The feral hogs of South Texas are becoming a problem. “Two million brawling, fornicating, filthy beasts despoiling the best grazing land in the world,” as rancher Amanda Cross puts it. “Most intelligent mammal around. Smarter than a porpoise. In fact the ones that have been despoiling the Cross Bar Ranch seem to have become unusually smart.” That’s why Cross has hired Ray Puzo, a Special Forces sniper who has spent the last 17 years dealing death in Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Hunting a few hogs sounds like an easy job to Ray, though the task quickly proves to be much more than he bargained for. For one thing, the Cross Bar Ranch is some 450 square miles in size. For another, Ray immediately embarrasses himself by getting beaten senseless by a vaquero outside the local watering hole. For a third, Cross’ 30-something daughter, Loretta, is an unstable, violent nymphomaniac who seduces Ray (mentioning that she’d love for him to kill her father). Oh, yeah, and then there’s the minor issue of the pigs themselves, who turn out to be a horde of superintelligent mutants who can speak and fire guns and go by punny pig names like Julius Caesar Pepperoniopolis and Reichsfuhrer Genghis of Cannes. The hogs have launched a holy war (“jihog”) against humankind, and their primary target is none other than the man they see as the greatest threat to their continued existence: Ray. Can Ray overcome his PTSD-induced sexual problems and defeat an army of anthropomorphized hogs?
Woods’ prose is a postmodernist mix of clever wording and libidinous humor, as here where he describes the tale’s primary setting: “Viewed from above, say from a Chinese spy satellite or perhaps one belonging to the Department of Homeland Security, the Cross Bar Ranch assumed the amphibian appearance of a giant pollywog. Or a lusty spermatozoon.” The book is gleefully violent and raunchy, and it doesn’t try to make its protagonist—an amoral man who isn’t afraid to drop a racial slur—palatable in the least. Ray is a type familiar enough from modern Westerns and crime novels, and he feels at home here in this genre mashup. Unfortunately, the story’s treatment of its female characters—most of whom throw themselves at Ray at one point or another—leaves much to be desired. The tone isn’t funny so much as it is absurdist. There are nods to Animal Farm, but the novel has no real political agenda per se, and its spiritual predecessors are less Orwell or Vonnegut than they are 1980s action movies. Readers looking for brainless fun of a certain he-man variety will find it here. But given Woods’ talent for turning a phrase or setting a scene, it’s disappointing that he did not set his ambitions a bit higher.
An amusing but garrulous bacchanalia of sex, guns, and talking pigs.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 337
Publisher: Close to the Bone
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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