Family drama and love story, Wascom’s latest is evidence of an evolving talent. Look for more.
Wascom (Secessia, 2015, etc.) delivers a lyrical, emotionally charged study of life along the Gulf Coast a century past.
With less self-conscious flash than in his previous novel, largely set in New Orleans, Wascom moves out to shore and “the sea of storms” with this comparatively modest tale of nature-knowing Isaac Patterson and his love for Kemper Woolsack, the heiress to the fortune of a family who constituted “a machine that fed on misery,” its riches bound to extracting the resources of the Gulf with no regard for the cost in the lives of others. Rich or poor, Wascom’s characters harbor secrets—especially Kemper’s brother, Angel, “hopelessly, helplessly bound” to a thinly closeted life as a gay man in a time when such a life is harshly punished. Angel’s torments are bound up as well in a Shakespearean family dynamic that plays out among the rusting hulk of the Maine, the streets of Havana and the hills of Haiti, and mildewed manses from Louisiana to Florida. Suffice it to say that not much can end well given such ingredients. Even so, the tragedy that closes Kemper and Isaac’s life together comes as a swiftly onrushing surprise, as does a galloping conclusion that follows a much more languorously unfolding narrative, one that takes in wayward women, country preachers, orphanages, steaming ports, and a thousand well-observed period details. The best moments of this very good book are those in which Wascom writes with sententious but not sentimental poetry: “There are those who condescend to tell you about love and loss, and have known neither at its full pitch, which is nearest to madness and sends us out to wander unknown, night-black countries, seeking what we cannot have, the land growing less and less familiar with each step.”
Family drama and love story, Wascom’s latest is evidence of an evolving talent. Look for more.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2817-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
A disappointingly bland follow-up to a stellar story collection.
A first novel from Pulitzer-winner Lahiri (stories: Interpreter of Maladies, 1999) focuses on the divide between Indian immigrants and their Americanized children.
The action takes place in and around Boston and New York between 1968 and 2000. As it begins, Ashoke Ganguli and his pregnant young wife Ashima are living in Cambridge while he does research at MIT. Their marriage was arranged in Calcutta: no problem. What is a problem is naming their son. Years before in India, a book by Gogol had saved Ashoke’s life in a train wreck, so he wants to name the boy Gogol. The matter becomes contentious and is hashed out at tedious length. Gogol grows to hate his name, and at 18 the Beatles-loving Yale freshman changes it officially to Nikhil. His father is now a professor outside Boston; his parents socialize exclusively with other middle-class Bengalis. The outward-looking Gogol, however, mixes easily with non-Indian Americans like his first girlfriend Ruth, another Yalie. Though Lahiri writes with painstaking care, her dry synoptic style fails to capture the quirkiness of relationships. Many scenes cry out for dialogue that would enable her characters to cut loose from a buttoned-down world in which much is documented but little revealed. After an unspecified quarrel, Ruth exits. Gogol goes to work as an architect in New York and meets Maxine, a book editor who seems his perfect match. Then his father dies unexpectedly—the kind of death that fills in for lack of plot—and he breaks up with Maxine, who like Ruth departs after a reported altercation (nothing verbatim). Girlfriend number three is an ultrasophisticated Indian academic with as little interest in Bengali culture as Gogol; these kindred spirits marry, but the restless Moushumi proves unfaithful. The ending finds the namesake alone, about to read the Russian Gogol for the first time.
A disappointingly bland follow-up to a stellar story collection.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-395-92721-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
Light on surprises and character development, this tepid thriller will have most astute readers correctly guessing the...
An accident forces a man to return to his small Iowa hometown and confront violent secrets from his past, ones he’s kept hidden from his wife.
Sarah Quinlan thought she knew everything about her husband, Jack: an accident killed his parents when he was 15 so he left Penny Gate, Iowa, and has only been back once. But when the couple gets news that Jack’s beloved aunt Julia, who raised Jack and his younger sister, Amy, after their parents’ deaths, is gravely injured in a fall, the prodigal son returns. Gudenkauf (Little Mercies, 2014, etc.) makes it clear from the start that nothing should be taken at face value, not Jack’s story about his parents (his mother was actually bludgeoned to death, and his father, now MIA, was the prime suspect) or the seemingly idyllic small-town atmosphere. This, however, does little to heighten the suspense as advice columnist Sarah takes on the role of amateur detective in sniffing out Quinlan family secrets past and present. Through her we meet Jack’s terse cousin Dean and his too-perfect wife, Celia, along with Julia’s husband, Hal, who became like a father to Jack in the wake of his own family tragedy, and Amy, who couldn’t be more stereotypically “troubled.” Jack and Amy’s tragic past, which becomes the central mystery of the plot once Sarah figures out that her husband has been lying to her for two decades, is tied to Julia’s not-so-accidental fall, but only for the purposes of a neatly sewn-up plot.
Light on surprises and character development, this tepid thriller will have most astute readers correctly guessing the ending halfway through.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1865-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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