Likable, jaunty, lesser Vonnegut: the chatty autobiography of minor Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian (a minor player in Breakfast of Champions)—interspersed with Rabo's present-day doings in his posh, art-treasure-filled manse in East Hampton, Long Island. Now 70-ish, a loner since the death of his super-rich, beloved second wife, Rabo hasn't painted for years. His potato-barn studio is locked, with his final, secret masterwork contained therein (á la Bluebeard); his house bursts with the Pollocks and Rothkos and such he acquired years ago for little or nothing; his own so-so oeuvre is nonexistent, having self-destructed—"thanks to unforeseen chemical reactions between the sizing of my canvases and the acrylic wall-paint and colored tapes I had applied to them." So Rabo is writing his memoirs, despite frequent interruptions from his new, self-invited house. guest: nosy, pushy, voluptuous Circe Berman, 43, widow of a Baltimore brain-surgeon, and author (under the "Polly Madison" pseudonym) of super-popular YA novels. And there are also occasional visits from neighbor-chum Paul Slazinger, a penniless, artistic novelist whose fragile psyche is hard-hit by the presence of crafty, nonartistic best-selling "Polly Madison." The memoirs themselves also feature this hoary art/commerce dichotomy. As an artistically gifted boy in 1920's California, child of Armenian immigrants (traumatized by the Turkish atrocities), Rabo writes fan letters to famous, super-realistic NYC illustrator Dan Gregory (nÉ Gregorian)—and wins, long-distance, the heart of Gregory's abused mistress Marilee Kemp. This leads to an apprenticeship with creepy Gregory (a graphic "taxidermist"), a brief affair with Marilee ("three hours of ideal lovemaking"), and a lifelong preoccupation with technique vs. "soul" in painting. Later on there's WW II service as a camouflage specialist (Rabo loses an eye), an unnerving reunion with war. scarred Marilee in Italy, and bohemian days with the young Abstract Expressionists—focusing on a fictional, self-destroying genius named Terry Kitchen. The book's final revelation—the nature of the secret painting locked up in the potato-barn—finds Vonnegut returning, without much force, to his favorite antiwar themes. Elsewhere, too, the familiar messages—pacifist, humanist, feminist—are worked in rather clumsily. But the curmudgeonly interplay with unstoppable snoop Circe/Polly has a bright comic edge reminiscent, mildly, of Berger and Bellow; the sprightly memoirs have just a light, airy shading of fable and exaggeration. So, though less arresting or Vivid or disturbing than prime Vonnegut (and a disappointment for readers expecting real development of the Abstract Expressionist angle), this is an easy-to-take mixture of comic diversion, low-key satire, and unabashed preaching.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1987
ISBN: 038533351X
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1987
A magnificent achievement: a novel that is, by turns, both optimistic and fatalistic, idealistic without being naïve.
Powers’ (Orfeo, 2014, etc.) 12th novel is a masterpiece of operatic proportions, involving nine central characters and more than half a century of American life.
In this work, Powers takes on the subject of nature, or our relationship to nature, as filtered through the lens of environmental activism, although at its heart the book is after more existential concerns. As is the case with much of Powers’ fiction, it takes shape slowly—first in a pastiche of narratives establishing the characters (a psychologist, an undergraduate who died briefly but was revived, a paraplegic computer game designer, a homeless vet), and then in the kaleidoscopic ways these individuals come together and break apart. “We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men,” Powers writes, quoting the naturalist John Muir. “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” The idea is important because what Powers means to explore is a sense of how we become who we are, individually and collectively, and our responsibility to the planet and to ourselves. Nick, for instance, continues a project begun by his grandfather to take repeated photographs of a single chestnut tree, “one a month for seventy-six years.” Pat, a visionary botanist, discovers how trees communicate with one another only to be discredited and then, a generation later, reaffirmed. What links the characters is survival—the survival of both trees and human beings. The bulk of the action unfolds during the timber wars of the late 1990s, as the characters coalesce on the Pacific coast to save old-growth sequoia from logging concerns. For Powers, however, political or environmental activism becomes a filter through which to consider the connectedness of all things—not only the human lives he portrays in often painfully intricate dimensions, but also the biosphere, both virtual and natural. “The world starts here,” Powers insists. “This is the merest beginning. Life can do anything. You have no idea.”
A magnificent achievement: a novel that is, by turns, both optimistic and fatalistic, idealistic without being naïve.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-63552-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
Like a pair of distressed designer jeans, the narrative's scruffiness can feel a little too engineered, but the narrator's...
A young woman with a knack for trick shooting heads west in the late 1800s to track down her outlaw brother.
Jessilyn Harney, the folksy narrator of Larison’s third novel (Holding Lies, 2011, etc.), has grown up watching her family lose its grip on its prairie homestead: Her mother died young, and her father is an alcoholic scraping by with small cattle herds. He’s also persistently at loggerheads with Jess' brother, Noah, who eventually runs off to, if the wanted posters are to be believed, lead a Jesse James–style criminal posse. So when dad dies as well, there’s nothing for teenage Jess to do but head west to find her brother, which she does disguised as a man. (“A man can be invisible when he wants to be.”) Her skill with a gun gets her in the good graces of a territorial governor (Larison is stingy with place names, but we’re near the Rockies), which ultimately leads to Noah and a series of revelations about the false tales of accomplishment that men cloak themselves with. Indeed, Jess’ success depends on repeatedly exploiting false masculine bravado: “I found no shortage of men with a predilection for gambling and an unfounded confidence in their own abilities with a sidearm,” she writes. The novel’s plot is a familiar Western, with duels, raids, and betrayals, brought thematically up to date with a few scenes involving closeted sexuality and mixed-race relationships. But its main distinction is Jess’ narrative voice: flinty, compassionate, unschooled, but observant about a violent world where men “eat bullets and walk among ghosts.” The dialogue sometimes lapses into saloon-talk truisms (“Men is all the time hiding behind words”; “Being a boss is always knowing your true size”). But Jess herself is a remarkable hero.
Like a pair of distressed designer jeans, the narrative's scruffiness can feel a little too engineered, but the narrator's voice is engaging and down-to-earth.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2044-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
