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FRANKIE JONES

An introspective tale of self-discovery that’s worth reading for its lyricism and insights.

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In Klein’s debut novel, a man travels across the country and around the world, searching for happiness and meaning in his life.

After starting out with pitifully few advantages, Frankie Jones enjoys a charmed life as an adult. As a baby, he’s abandoned by his father and orphaned a few years later when his mother dies in a factory fire. At age 16, he leaves his orphanage and gets a busboy job in a St. Louis diner, where he’s mentored by a blues-playing cook and his family. He eventually saves enough money to travel abroad, and he goes on to visit 32 different countries; he also has some love affairs along the way. When he tires of roaming, he returns to the United States and goes to college, where he earns a degree in journalism. In Boston, while working as a newspaper reporter, he meets Mercedes Brewster, the woman he will later consider to be the love of his life. Although they’re from different backgrounds—she’s blue-blooded, and he calls himself the “bastard son of a pauper with no history at all”—it doesn’t stop them from falling in love. But soon his restlessness compels him to travel across the country to take a reporting job in San Diego. There, he pines for Mercedes but finds new opportunities for love and friendship, which leads to a betrayal. As Frankie deals with the consequences of his actions, he contemplates the nuanced differences between elusive happiness and attainable contentment. Klein conveys philosophical ideas with beautifully crafted prose and vivid descriptions, such as “A biting mad-dog wind snapped down the street mean as a blister” and “I watched blindly as the orange sun drowned itself in the ocean and the sky fizzled with sparklers of every shade.” The story, told from a distinctly male point of view, has echoes of the work of Ernest Hemingway, particularly during its spearfishing sequences, which are set in Baja California, Mexico. Frankie also comes across as likable, despite his issues with identity and commitment, and although he discusses much with his friends and lovers, much is left unresolved—as often happens in real life.

An introspective tale of self-discovery that’s worth reading for its lyricism and insights. 

Pub Date: June 14, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5327-8246-6

Page Count: 206

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017

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CONCLAVE

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

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THE SECRET HISTORY

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

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