A mad masala of mythology and absurd mayhem that takes an unexpectedly poignant twist.
Thekkumthala’s magical-realist comic-cosmic phantasmagoria welcomes readers to a bizarre community in India, where a notoriously haunted landmark mansion sees UFO aliens, disappearances, drug crimes, murder, and madcap paranormal phenomena.
In the Malayalee town of Amballore in Kerala, India, the unbelievable, the mythological, and the mundane riotously coexist. Amballore House, a five-acre relic from the days of the British Raj, is the neighborhood’s haunted mansion; it boasts a history of trespassers disappearing or drowning in the well. The house sits at the terminus of a boulevard called Hells Highway, a road adorned by accursed cult temples, the lunatic asylum, graveyards, and sylphlike spirits who dance to the music of popular Indian movies. Moreover, a paranormal public-transportation bus—known as the Midnight Express for its nighttime ufological behavior, i.e., flying, shape-shifting, and teleportation—makes a regular nocturnal run on (or over) Hell’s Highway to the house. Half of Thekkumthala’s narrative is not so much a story as a tour of the area, going all the way back to a nutty treatise on the evolution of prehistoric Homo sapiens in the vicinity; due to regular alien-abduction genetic tampering, the locals are now the variation Homo Malayalee. The highly elastic narrative leapfrogs back and forth between 1960 and 1988 with several recurring characters, most notably the elderly couple of Vareed and Eli. They are part of a family whose ancestors have been regularly abducted by aliens going back 5,000 years. Since their own ET abductions, Vareed and Eli have been systematically returning to Earth to kidnap the best minds of humanity and send them off-planet via a space-time wormhole beneath Amballore House, serviced by a loyal retinue of robots. The crazy servings of sci-fi, over-the-top crimes and courtroom inquests, distorted folk beliefs, boondocks gossip, errant reportage in the Amballore Times, inferior scholarship by the region’s university community, and lots and lots of toddy drinking take on a new light in the closing chapter. That’s when Thekkumthala introduces a new character and the haunting possibility that all this activity might actually be the “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”–type imaginary confabulations of a sad local who sought to escape an unhappy, poverty-stricken home life. The blend of regional flavor, fantastic whimsy, and pathos will strike readers with a taste for riotous exoticism stirred with tabloid tropes.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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