An intricate paranormal story that draws in readers with grounded characters.
A man in present-day Wisconsin has an apparent link to a mid-19th-century man who sought revenge against his mother’s killers in Zarem’s (Entangled, 2007, etc.) psychological tale.
After Stephan Shores falls and knocks himself out, he has two vivid memories—his beloved golden retriever, Daisy, is dead, and his friend Samantha “Sam” Torrance has Hodgkin’s disease. Post-injury, he sees that Daisy is alive and Sam is cancer-free. Later, however, he awakens from a coma. It seems he was actually in a car accident, and the life he knew returns (Sam with Hodgkin’s and Daisy gone). One cryptic directive remains in his mind: contact Dr. Gaius Bjornson and find the angel bone pendant. With Sam’s help, Stephan tracks down Gaius, a psychiatrist who specializes in regression therapy. Gaius talks about an LSD trip he had that included an angel-shaped pendant made of bone, which Gaius believes has spiritual significance. He also believes that Stephan somehow learned about the pendant’s location while in his coma. Sure enough, Stephan dreams of Isabelle Abano, a woman in 1855 who evidently gave the pendant to her 10-year-old son, Ulysses. Stephan soon seems to be living Ulysses’ past life, when the then-grown Ulysses wanted to avenge Isabelle’s murder. Perhaps, in the present day, Stephan will discover where the pendant is buried. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Zarem’s novel can be dizzying. While the shifts between 2017 and 1855 (or 1866) are precise and easy to follow, certain events in Stephan’s life are less consistent. For example, throughout the book, the protagonist is intermittently disoriented either from an intense dream or, it would seem, lingering effects of his head injury. This will surely lead readers to question what, if anything, is truly taking place. The author, however, skillfully manages the complex plotlines by, for one, firmly establishing characters and settings. This alleviates jarring narrative turns, like when the story suddenly shifts from Stephan’s first-person narration in the present day to Ulysses’ in the 19th century. It’s an extended sequence that establishes a new perspective and setting before another narrative shift occurs. This further allows for prolonged, rewarding scenes between characters. A highlight is the strengthening bond between Stephan and the doctor’s son, who has a cognitive impairment but somehow connects with Stephan through a psychic ability (e.g., drawing pictures of future events). There’s also a sublimely understated romance between Stephan and Sam; although his love for her is unrequited, their shared moments are often tender. “I roll my head down onto her shoulder,” he muses. “The nape of her neck smells wonderful, like fresh rain and gingerbread soap. I want to hide away in this little nook.” The book’s historical backdrop is remarkable, with notable references to post–Civil War life in 1866 and, in a later twist, the surprise appearance of a historical figure. Though the novel concludes with a good deal of resolution, it leaves a few open-ended elements.
An intricate paranormal story that draws in readers with grounded characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2019
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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