Surreal interior landscapes, shamelessly incantatory prose and an enduring ambivalence toward the neo-gothic conventions...
Ten reprints (2001–2006) that run the gamut from almost-realism to out-of-this-world.
The most naturalistic entry is the longest, “The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza,” whose heroine’s recollection of her prizefighter father’s betrayal echoes Hemingway’s “Fifty Grand.” A rejected husband contemplates the ugly surprise he’s preparing for his estranged wife in “Valentine, July Heat Wave.” Moving further away from realism, “Bad Habits” presents the ordeal of a serial killer’s family; “The Hunter” follows a man released from prison but not from his demons; “Feral” shows that (but not how) a near-drowning turns a model child into a clinical case; and “The Twins: A Mystery” uses a metafictional frame to present a father who orchestrates (or does he?) a murderous sibling rivalry between his sons—a rivalry that plays out in generational terms, with a maybe-dead grandson serving as the battlefield between father and son, in “Suicide Watch.” “Hi! Howya Doin!” and “Stripping” are brief monologues moving from routine annoyance to murderous rage. And the heroine’s tour in the title story of a ghoulish museum run by her mother’s new husband shows how deft Oates is at sliding into overheated horrors before transposing her conventional settings into psychological anatomies with a precision worthy of Poe.
Surreal interior landscapes, shamelessly incantatory prose and an enduring ambivalence toward the neo-gothic conventions from which Oates (The Gravedigger’s Daughter, 2007, etc.) draws her power to shock and dismay.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-15-101531-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
Utter non-scents.
Die-hard Yankee candle maker Stella Wright (Murder’s No Votive Confidence, 2018) gets caught up in a trans-Atlantic murder plot.
Stella thoroughly enjoys her trip to Paris even though her mother, perfume expert Millie Wright, who’s scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “The Art of Scent Extractions” at the World Perfumery Conference, gets preempted by a murder. Sadly, once they’re back home in Nantucket, things get even weirder. Stella receives an anonymous note threatening her mom if Stella doesn’t turn over a secret formula hidden in Millie’s bag. Her mom can’t help because she’s in the hospital courtesy of an overenthusiastic attempt by Stella’s cat, Tinker, to befriend her. While trespassing on a suspicious sailboat, Stella meets U.S. Agent Sarah Hill, who warns her that well-known anarchist Rex Laruam plans to disrupt the upcoming Peace Jubilee using a stolen formula he secreted in Millie’s bag after he stabbed the agent guarding it back in Paris. Ignoring the advice of her friend Andy Southerland, a Nantucket cop, to leave detection to the professionals, Stella tries to unmask the elusive Laruam. As she spies on a bevy of unlikely suspects, the plot spirals further and further out of control: There’s a Canadian couple staying at an Airbnb run by Stella’s cousin Chris who whisper sweet but suspicious nothings in the dark, a shovel-wielding schoolmarm, a gang of old geezers who have a collective crush on Millie, a surprise 30th-birthday party planned by Stella’s beau, Peter Bailey, and an even more surprising impromptu airplane ride.
Utter non-scents.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2141-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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