Eight narrative sketches, rather in the manner of Beerbohm's Seven Men, of figures who, as Symons says, ``never fitted into any of my crime stories.'' Though the opening anecdote about cadaverous columnist E. J. Bastable and Promethean dunderhead Thomas Tucker (whom Bastable keeps promoting as ``the poet of the era'') is, despite the author's disclaimer, a full-blown short story, most of the succeeding pieces are parables of social history. Symons dramatizes the decline of modern England through the unlovely lives of George Constant (``Georgie Boy'') and Rupert Loxley, who wend their way through a thicket of historical and fictional characters (including Mark Ruthven, George Orwell, and Symons himself) to climb aboard every bandwagon politics and pop sociology can harness in an attempt to carve out their niche. Even more mordantly penetrating are the more floridly self-inventing gifts of scandal-hawking widow Eva Threadfall (nÇe Ella Brown) and gallery owner Rudi Picabia (nÇ Bert Stubbs). Symons's characteristically acrid tone is leavened with rare flashes of sympathy for anachronistic Labour stalwart Charlie Paradon and flinty literary editor Norris Tibbs, whose vision of the future—``I see your freedom spreading like a disease....I see all kinds of nonsense called art, any daub or cartoon or children's comic book....`Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'''—appropriately ends the book on a note of elegiac revulsion. As in the cautionary sociological parables smuggled into detective stories from The Thirty-First of February (1950) to Death's Darkest Face (1990), Symons hits his targets with deadly accuracy. Brevity and repetitiousness, though, make this a thin book for the money.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-233-98718-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Andre Deutsch/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out...
A post-apocalyptic novel in which Hig, who only goes by this mononym, finds not only survival, but also the possibility of love.
As in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the catastrophe that has turned the world into its cataclysmic state remains unnamed, but it involves “The Blood,” a highly virulent and contagious disease that has drastically reduced the population and has turned most of the remaining survivors into grim hangers-on, fiercely protective of their limited territory. Hig lives in an abandoned airplane hangar and keeps a 1956 Cessna, which he periodically takes out to survey the harsh and formidable landscape. While on rare occasions he spots a few Mennonites, fear of “The Blood” generally keeps people at more than arm’s length. Hig has established a defensive perimeter by a large berm, competently guarded by Bangley, a terrifying friend but exactly the kind of guy you want on your side, since he can pot intruders from hundreds of yards away, and he has plenty of firepower to do it. Haunted by a voice he heard faintly on the radio, Hig takes off one day in search of fellow survivors and comes across Pops and Cima, a father and daughter who are barely eking out a living off the land by gardening and tending a few emaciated sheep. Like Bangley, Pops is laconic and doesn’t yield much, but Hig understandably finds himself attracted to Cima, the only woman for hundreds of miles and a replacement for the ache Hig feels in having lost his pregnant wife, Melissa, years before.
Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out some hope that human relationships can be redemptive.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95994-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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