A thrilling, adventurous novel that will appeal especially to readers interested in business recon.
Debut novelist Ardo offers a unique, concise novella about a young widower who finds redemption through politically motivated corporate espionage.
Jon Hersey, a superstar business consultant, struggles with depression after losing his wife, Alissa, to cancer. Some months after her death, Hersey resumes business travel in his capacity as a business analyst for Biz Planners, LLC. En route to Dallas, he encounters a friendly businessman named Daryl Alexander in the airport. On his return flight, Hersey finds himself bumped up to first class and coincidentally seated near Alexander. During the flight, Alexander reveals that Hersey has been under prolonged surveillance by Zeta Consulting Group, a nonprofit organization in which Alexander is one of several employees. Zeta is interested in hiring Hersey because of his former training as a Navy SEAL and his impressive business savvy. They want him to work as a corporate/political spy, helping to uncover and thwart schemes by American corporate contractors that undermine the political agenda of the U.S. government. After getting past his initial shock, Hersey decides to give Zeta a shot, partially due to his enthusiasm for thwarting terrorism but also due to discontentedness with his current existence. The story unfolds mostly in a close third-person narrative, though it periodically shifts into other characters’ perspectives, which tends to disrupt the otherwise well-crafted tale. Also included are touching flashbacks of Hersey with his late wife that give color to Hersey’s loss and elucidate his decision to pursue an unconventional, high-risk career path. Although the story requires a substantial suspension of disbelief regarding the nature of spy recruitment in corporate America, as well as the effectiveness of certain investigative tactics, Ardo provides complex, chilling portrayals of corporations abetting terrorism. His ability to create likable characters will have readers rooting for Hersey from the start.
A thrilling, adventurous novel that will appeal especially to readers interested in business recon.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475951783
Page Count: 102
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
