by Lee R. Hadley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
A relatively restrained, old-style yarn of supernatural retribution and redemption that may leave gore-hounds feeling a bit...
A batch of shirts bearing deadly serpents, obtained unethically by a shady businessman, spawns terror at a retailer convention in New Orleans.
In his supernatural novel, Hadley (Origins, 2015) introduces Alex “Jensen” McIntyre, a Northern businessman headed for a retail trade show in New Orleans. By chance, he winds up using a filling station deep in the Louisiana swamps and encounters a Cajun crone named Mothe’ Moses. Despite her remoteness from civilization, she shows Jensen an inexplicable inventory hidden in her hovel—boxes of high-quality cotton shirts emblazoned with frightful, beyond-photorealistic imprints of venomous snakes. Although admonished by Mothe’ Moses not to cheat her with a bad check, Jensen is tempted to do exactly that, and he takes the shirts to his business convention, where they are, naturally, an attention-getter. But, as Mothe’ Moses warned, dire consequences soon ensue, with victims going “into some kind of catatonic state,” appearing dead but eventually showing some “muted signs of life.” The local medics start to suspect some kind of fearful epidemic. But Jensen’s friend and colleague Bob (also arriving in town on business and attempting to restore his cooling marriage) realizes that the cursed garments and Mothe’ Moses spill over from scientific reality into the realm of voodoo mysticism. Unfortunately, this book shares a title with a reality TV show and a handful of B-movies; it’s actually a tastefully wrought paranormal tale with some vivid passages of Louisiana bayou description. Depending on their thirst for mayhem, genre fans may be pleased (or annoyed) that the author refuses to slather the material in shocking bloodshed or Deep South drive-in, horror-flick culture along the lines of regional efforts from Joe R. Lansdale or even Stephen King. One might even characterize the story as a spiritual one (The Shack II: The Revenge, anybody?), except that evangelical intent is not obvious (although moral instruction is). The voodoo element gets handled respectfully rather than pulpishly, and a hint at Mothe’ Moses’ true identity remains a nice touch. But the author’s decision to tell the story using multiple first-person narrators (and all in fairly uniform voices) tends to telegraph the fates of a lot of characters in advance—defanging the suspense, one might say.
A relatively restrained, old-style yarn of supernatural retribution and redemption that may leave gore-hounds feeling a bit disappointed.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60645-160-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: BookWise Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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