If all novels were this good, Americans would read more.
A small masterpiece of black comedy and suspense about a trio of backwoods heroes who embark upon a modern-day quest.
Covering 24 hours, set in small-town Vermont, the novel begins and ends with a certain New England ennui, but what fills the in-between is an absorbing tale of toppling the giant of the woods. The day begins with Lillian sitting in her car, a paring knife in her lap, her dead cat in the passenger seat. Waiting for the sheriff, she wants to lodge a complaint against Blackway, a notorious thug who has been stalking her, and most recently offed fluffy Annabelle. Sheriff Wingate says he can’t help without proof (he’s strictly by the book), but maybe she should talk to some men at the old mill to see what they can do. Mill owner Whizzer sends Lillian off with Nate the Great, a large young man with more brawn than brains, and Lester Speed, an old-timer whose bag full of tricks will resolve Lillian’s problems. While the three track down their man (against Nate’s steady refrain: “I ain’t afraid of Blackway” and Lester’s vague plan to defeat a notorious outlaw), Whizzer and his gang of loafers sit in the mill office (one suspects this is a daily occurrence) and drink beer, philosophize and fill in some of the backstory about Lillian, Lester and Nate. Whizzer and the boys are beautifully nuanced, familiar and original, as they happily pontificate about nothing much. Meanwhile, our heroes, a few steps behind Blackway, find themselves at a trashy motel, in a windowless bar (where a man loses an ear thanks to Lester’s quick wrist) and finally in a forest, where they plan to confront Blackway at his converted bus. His novel a loose rendering of a King Arthur tale, Freeman (My Life and Adventures, 2002, etc.) builds a sense of otherworldly menace around Blackway, part petty-crook, part bogeyman. It seems all but impossible that an unarmed woman, a hulking youth and a limping old man could slay this beast.
If all novels were this good, Americans would read more.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58642-139-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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