The outlandish subplots eventually lead to family reconciliation but also make it difficult for readers to suspend their...
A very contemporary novel, opening in 2010 with the Icelandic volcano that disrupted air traffic in the U.K. for almost a week and ending in the spring of 2015.
The cloud of volcanic ash spewed out by Eyjafjallajökull created many disruptions for one London family. On the one hand, Harriet was briefly able to revive her flagging career as a radio reporter. On the other, her husband, Michael, was stuck in the U.S. on a business trip; since hotel rooms were sold out in New York, he traveled to Toronto to visit Marina, an old friend—though perhaps old flame would be more accurate, for he quickly rekindled the relationship into a weekend fling. At the same time, Harriet and Michael’s 14-year-old son, Jack, was also getting into trouble, going to parties with school friends and almost getting caught with drugs. The narrative then lurches somewhat awkwardly to 2012, and the focus shifts to Yacub, a Pakastani desperate to escape the poverty of his country; he literally takes flight in the wheel well of a plane. As it nears Heathrow, Yacub falls and, incredibly, lands on Harriet’s car. She understandably takes pity on him and takes him home. At first, Harriet tries to keep Yakub's presence a secret from her family, but eventually he comes out to play video games with Jack, and he even makes peace with Michael, who (like the reader) finds his presence rather bizarre. Another subplot—as if one is needed—involves Emily, an erstwhile filmmaker convinced she’s Harriet’s daughter from an earlier relationship with a psychologically unbalanced Irishman. Unbelievably, Emily, who’s been filming Harriet due to her suspected family connection, has video footage of Yacub’s “flight” out of the airplane and onto Harriet’s car.
The outlandish subplots eventually lead to family reconciliation but also make it difficult for readers to suspend their disbelief.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5137-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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