An uneven but entertaining drama that will appeal to Salinger’s fans in the YA crowd.
The first installment of Episcopal priest Stevens’ Ascalon, Ohio trilogy, originally published as a blog, follows several small-town college students and 20somethings as they piece together their belief systems and create a sense of belonging.
Paul Whin is an apprehensive romantic heading for Didymus College a mere five miles away. He’s charmingly caught up in the past, often channeling actors such as Gary Cooper when he needs an ego boost. He immediately falls for Eudora Moxey, a pretty classmate who’s open about her lack of sexual interest since her uncle molested her as a child. Paul’s a virgin in virtually all vices, but he soon falls prey to lust. Meanwhile, Tucker Zefferelli, a student at nearby Calgary College, has been breaking his school’s curfew to spend the night with his artist girlfriend Bee at his grandparents’ house while they’re away. He’s obsessed with The Beatles, particularly with Lennon and McCartney as spokesmen for truth and beauty, respectively. As Bee gradually grows distant, Tucker becomes enamored of Lily, the precocious little girl who lives across the street. And then there’s Renata Pasquills, a classically trained pianist embarking on her first teaching job while coming to terms with a recent breakup that has disrupted her interest in performing. A multitude of lesser characters also flood the novel, including Paul’s egotistical roommate, Aaron, with whom Paul struggles to get along. But despite the glut of characters, the book is weak in the plot department. Most chapters focus on Paul, but rotate between the major characters until the middle of the book, when the death of a college student serves to tie the stories into one. Stevens’ sex- and drug-fueled, pop-infused prose (he references musicians from Chopin to John Denver to Nick Cave) is straightforward and occasionally poetic, and expertly captures the collegiate voice of sexual longing and metaphysical musing. Unfortunately, he captures the voice so well that some characters are practically indistinguishable; readers could easily imagine them in just about any film featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Michael Cera. As the tension between Paul and his roommate escalates, the characters’ lives tailspin into a world of folly, where if monsters “can exist then anything can exist.” Everyone seeks redemption from the shackles of desire.
An uneven but entertaining drama that will appeal to Salinger’s fans in the YA crowd.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: K.P.B. Stevens
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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