A reasoned, pensive, and sometimes-tragic tale that yearns for tolerance.
A Philadelphia lawyer struggling with his sexuality and relationships befriends a mailroom clerk in this novel.
On the surface, Charles Hamilton appears to lead a fairly comfortable life with a bright future. After graduating from law school in the late 1970s, he easily secures a job in asset management at a brokerage house and is living with a British-born woman 10 years his senior named Carol Melbourne. Charles is young and attractive but has some mannerisms that lead many people to wonder if he is gay. Even Carol’s mother, the prim Edith Larue, laments: “What chance did Carol have? Some of these homosexuals can actually hypnotize a woman.” As the story jumps back and forth between the ’70s and the ’90s, Charles’ struggles are shown to be quite complex as more and more layers are revealed. He regularly visits a psychiatrist to work out his feelings about his sexuality and his partners, including those that result from Carol’s addiction to pills. Interspersed are scenes with Jimmy Zelroué, a gay, deaf mailroom clerk at the brokerage, whom Charles is intrigued by. They live in a decidedly anti-gay world where snap judgments and bigoted insults are the norm and the old-school ways of Philadelphia’s hardscrabble neighborhoods present an almost inescapable hazard. As the nation reels from the fallout of the savings and loan crisis, Charles turns to a hacker named Shirley Azalea to help him rescue someone he cares for. Nicholas (Black Mamba, 2016) has a superb ear for dialogue, easily writing about a time period when homophobic suspicion was loudly broadcast, whether in the financial world, academia, or working-class havens. While Charles is looking to connect, others whine and judge, terrified of a perceived homosexual threat. The novel’s many characters and their backstories are carefully portrayed, including several dynamic female characters, such as hacking pioneer Shirley. The author describes her operation’s technicalities as skillfully as he depicts the legal and financial issues that arise in the narrative. But the digressive structure of the book can make it unclear what year it is, and some extraneous characters and minor plot points play too big of a role.
A reasoned, pensive, and sometimes-tragic tale that yearns for tolerance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Copperthwaite
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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