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THE RUSSIAN GIRL

As pleasantly cantankerous as ever, the venerable Kingsley Amis (We Are All Guilty, 1992) once again casts his gimlet eye on the vanities of the age. Breezy drawing-room comedy here disguises his serious commentary on the relations between art and politics. Coming from Amis, of course, this 21st novel is also another salvo in the war between the sexes. Richard Vaisey, a distinguished scholar of Russian literature at the London Institute of Slavonic Studies, gladly suffers marriage to his peculiar wife, Cordelia, a beautiful heiress with an odd accent and a talent for pinching pennies. Once Richard's attentions begin to focus on the visiting poet, Anna Danilova, he realizes how truly nasty Cordelia is. Anna, for her part, poses a more interesting problem. She has come to England to enlist support for her ne'er-do-well brother, a petty convict in a Soviet jail. Because this is set before the collapse of communism, her plan involves establishing herself as an important artisitic critic of the regime. Unfortunately, Richard thinks her poetry is dreck, an opinion shared by the famous novelist in exile, Kotolynov. While Richard's best friend, the wealthy Czech, Crispin Radetsky, enlists the powerful in Anna's support, Richard himself comes undone. He neglects his students; Cordelia disappears; and he finally understands what a "randy bastard" he's become. Running off with Anna is a matter of prudence, not morality, for Richard, who contemplates the severe financial consequences of his act. Meanwhile, the scorned Cordelia proves to be a shrew of truly Amis-like dimensions, orchestrating her revenge with totalitarian glee. Though Richard compromises his sense of artistic merit for his love of Anna, things turn out okay in the end. After all, everyone here is terribly droll and sophisticated when it comes to plain adultery. Vintage Amis — as divisive, compelling, and hilarious as the Bobbitt trial.

Pub Date: May 1, 1994

ISBN: 0140251723

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994

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THE SECRET HISTORY

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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OF MICE AND MEN

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define.  Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936

ISBN: 0140177396

Page Count: 83

Publisher: Covici, Friede

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936

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