With another fascinating novel that traffics in strange and transporting states of being, Malerman (Black Mad Wheel, 2017,...
In a surreal, Wild West take on Sleeping Beauty, storied outlaw James Moxie must save his one-time lover Carol Evers from being buried alive.
Only a few people aside from Carol's shifty husband, Dwight, know that she suffers from a condition that periodically sends her spiraling into a coma resembling death and a place she calls Howltown. "Unable to shoulder the burden of caring for a woman who died so often," Moxie disappeared from her life 20 years ago. Her close friend John Bowie, in whom she also confided, has just died. Fearing that should Dwight die when she's in a coma, no one will know not to bury her, she entrusts her secret to a young maid. But it's Dwight who proves to be her greatest threat. Having had it with her freakish condition and wanting to freely lay hands on her money, he decides to make her latest "death" permanent by burying her alive. To get to her first, Moxie, who is drawn back into Carol's life by an odd funeral announcement dispatched by the maid, must elude a ruthless killer with tin legs named Smoke—a man "as monstrous as anything local folklore had invented." Other evil forces, as well as good, abound. Though the book sometimes recalls Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Malerman is too fierce an original to allow anyone else's vision to intrude on his. Where other novelists, including Gaiman, would lighten things with humor, Malerman achieves his narrative intensity with a dead seriousness. As with his other novels, this one haunts for reasons you can't quite put your finger on.
With another fascinating novel that traffics in strange and transporting states of being, Malerman (Black Mad Wheel, 2017, etc.) again defies categories and comparisons with other writers.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-18016-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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