A promising premise that is sometimes too clever for its own good.
A psychology professor encounters a teenage girl who exists as multiple incarnations, each living in a separate reality.
During a sudden downpour in 1967, Garrett Adams is browsing in a crowded bookshop on Columbus Circle when a crowd of people push in to escape the rain. As he starts reading a book about Schrödinger—he of the famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment—Garrett impulsively decides to ask any customer to lunch who also comes and picks up the book, hoping for an impromptu discussion about philosophy. When the next taker turns out to be a teenage girl named Daphne, Garrett strikes up an unlikely friendship with the precocious young woman. Soon after meeting, the two visit an art gallery and encounter a painting that is, without question, of Daphne. The only trouble is, she insists she never sat for it. When Garrett makes a visit to the artist, he learns Daphne was in Boston with the painter at the exact same time that Garrett visited the New York gallery—with Daphne. Thus begins Garrett’s wild journey to put together the pieces of how Daphne can seem to be two (and later more) people at the same time. With the help of the gallery owner and an old college friend who now practices psychotherapy, Garrett follows his Alice, or Alices, down the rabbit hole of late 1960s youth culture. Brett, who has written a critical study of postmodern fiction (Disquiet on the Western Front, 2016), has hit upon an immensely interesting concept for her debut novel, one that allows her to dig deep into psychology, philosophy, physics, and, most importantly, politics as Daphne shakes Garrett out of his indifference toward the cultural turmoil of the late '60s. But the book wears its historical details stiffly, and the book’s idea-heavy passages work against the plot’s natural momentum.
A promising premise that is sometimes too clever for its own good.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61775-729-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kaylie Jones/Akashic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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