Taylor nails The Scene, but at the expense of the story.
A cult emerges from a punk/hippie sanctuary in this mordant first novel from the author of the story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever (2010).
Like other college towns, Gainesville, Fla., is a haven for alternative lifestyles. David is slow to catch on, but in his junior year, everything changes for this liberal arts major. A relationship ends; he loses interest in his courses; he stays home masturbating before his laptop, then throws it in the tub in self-disgust. Salvation comes when he runs into two Dumpster divers, Thomas and Liz. He knows Thomas from their suburban Miami childhood. They take him back to Fishgut, their dilapidated house with its floating population of punks. There he meets Katy, and his emancipation is complete. He’s dropped out. She’s a generous earth-mother type, as willing to share her body with this newcomer as with her girlfriend Liz. (Taylor writes sex wonderfully well.) She’s also a self-styled Anarchristian, happily blending anarchy and Christianity, unlike those uptight Catholic students at the church reception they attend for a goof (and for the free food). What really fires Katy up is her discovery of a notebook buried in their yard. It belonged to Parker, Fishgut’s mysterious founder. Katy takes its religious and philosophical ramblings as the ultimate truth, the Gospel. David, now her ardent disciple, edits it with her into a pamphlet, perfect for the Millennium (the story is set in 1999). Not everyone is sold; Thomas, an atheist Jew, leaves Fishgut for the Battle of Seattle after maliciously inserting a line of bull into the Gospel. Taylor’s nimble analysis of these schisms recalls T.C. Boyle’s Drop City, but he lacks Boyle’s sense of direction. That might have taken us to Parker, who remains an enigma, while Katy’s further development stalls. Excerpts from the Gospel serve as filler, and momentum drains away among a variety of voices.
Taylor nails The Scene, but at the expense of the story.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-188182-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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