Contrived storytelling outweighs the book’s scattered historical insights.
An aging musician revisits the love affair he had nearly 50 years earlier with the illustrious pianist Vladimir Horowitz.
Midnight in a Zurich cabaret, April 1986, and the piano player, Nico Kaufmann, gets an odd request: play Robert Schumann’s Träumerei. The three-minute miniature is an auditory madeleine for the customer, Reto Donati, a high-profile lawyer who earlier that day skipped out on his dubious appointment to be euthanized after a recording of the song triggered a poignant youthful memory. He has sought out the piano bar “to thank the piece” for saving his life. Träumerei also resonates with Kaufmann because of his association with Horowitz, for whom the piece was a cherished encore. This clavier coincidence is enough that the 70-year-old Kaufmann leaves with the 45-year-old Donati, who takes up residence in Kaufmann’s guest room. For the next two weeks, the duo tour in and around Zurich while Kaufmann relates how he, as a 21-year-old “gigolo,” met the 33-year-old Horowitz in 1937 and became his student and lover. The affair persisted more than two years—against the wishes of Kaufmann’s father, Horowitz’s wife, even Horowitz‘s own neuroses. Singer, the pen name of German cultural historian Eva Gesine Baur, had access to the real Kaufmann’s unpublished archives, including letters from Horowitz, which perhaps explains why her book never settles into either a conventional retelling of Kaufmann‘s life or the novel enticingly introduced in the first two chapters. Donati’s story is relegated to infrequent, often jarring, intrusions, mostly in the form of one-note expository characters, like his jilted, golf club–wielding fiancee; or facile verbal proddings, á la “What were you thinking that whole time?” This short shrift is a shame, because Donati’s tale of suppressed love, what little is dribbled out, seems much more fertile ground for compelling fiction.
Contrived storytelling outweighs the book’s scattered historical insights.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-939931-86-3
Page Count: 230
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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 standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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