Since no one at Eugen Bischoff's 1909 musical soirÇe wants to tell him that his bank has just failed and his contract as actor to the Viennese court will not be renewed, the assembled company—his wife, Dina, her brother Felix, Dr. Eduard von Gorski, the engineer Waldemar Solgrub, and Baron Gottfried von Yosch, Dina's former lover—are eager to listen to his unsettling story of an acquaintance, a young naval officer who retraced the final days of his brother, a suicidal painter, so closely that he ended up killing himself. A few minutes later Bischoff himself is dead, shot inside a locked room. Is it suicide, as the scene suggests, or has he been subtly murdered, as Felix insists, by von Yosch's news about the bank failure? Determined to clear his name, von Yosch investigates Bischoff's own recent movements, and uncovers an uncanny pattern: the suicide of a young pharmacist, the madness of one of von Yosch's former subordinates, the death (by heart failure?) of Solgrub—all linked to the awesomely powerful person the pharmacist called ``the Master of the Day of Judgment.'' The identity of the Master provides a solution that, like that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is more disturbing than the mystery itself. Another of Perutz's allegorical fables (The Swedish Cavalier, 1993, etc.), this tale, first published in 1921, manages, like Stevenson's classic, to be at once obvious, sedate, and hair- raising.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55970-171-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Irving's novels, which often begin in autobiographical commonplace, get transformed along the way: sometimes into fairy tale (The Hotel New Hampshire), sometimes into modern-day ironic fable (The World According to Garp). This one—set in New Hampshire in the 50's and 60's—is a little of both, but not enough of either: its tone is finally too self-righteous to be fully convincing as fiction. In 1953, Owen Meany—a physically tiny man with a big voice who believes he's God's instrument—kills his best friend's mother with a foul ball. His best friend, Johnny Wheelwright, is the book's narrator: from Toronto, where he has lived for some 20 odd years, he tells the story of Owen Meany, who has a voice that "comes from God," of his own "Father Hunt"—Wheelwright is the product of his mother's "little fling"—and of growing up in the Sixties, when some people believed in destiny, others in coincidence. Sweetly moralistic, Wheelwright, who became "a Christian because of Owen Meany," sometimes launches into tirades about Reagan and the Iran/contra fiasco, but mostly he tells Owen's story: Meany, who always writes and speaks in the uppercase, is the real mouthpiece here, though Wheelwright is his Nick Carraway. Meany, after hitting "that fated baseball," no longer believes in accidents: his parents, in the granite business, convince him that he's the product of a virgin birth (we learn late in the book). His sense of destiny serves him well: not only does he play the Christ child in a Christmas pageant and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but his pontificating "Voice" becomes a great power at the prep school he attends with Johnny (there are some marvelous sendups of prep school), and he "sees" the circumstances and the date of his own death. After much inventive detail (as well as much slapstick and whimsy dealing with Meany's tiny size and strange voice) and the working-out of a three-way relationship involving Meany, Johnny, and his cousin Hester, Meany saws off Johnny's finger in order to keep him out of Vietnam, dies as he foresaw, and reveals to Johnny from beyond the grave that the local Congregationalist minister is his real father. Vintage Irving—though here Dickensian coincidence, an Irving staple, becomes the subject of the book rather than a technique. The result is a novel that seems sincere but turns too bombastic and insistent in its opinions about literature, religion, and politics.
Pub Date: March 30, 1989
ISBN: 0679642595
Page Count: -
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
Unsettling in its depiction of sadistic sex acts and hauntingly sad in its portrayal of a lonely soul tittering on the edge...
Posthumous work by the unflinching Lewis (The Second Suspect, 1998, etc.) offers a chilling glimpse inside the head of a young prostitute forsaken by family and lovers.
Living in an unnamed suburb in the well-appointed house of her absent parents, who seem to care not at all what she does, first-person narrator Nina (her professional name) begins to turn tricks in the parking lot of the local train station. Details emerge in nonchalant fashion, described in a deadpan voice. Nina has had some experience with drugs, and she’s been locked up, possibly for psychiatric reasons. Her actions, which at first seem innocent or helpless, soon turn needy and ugly. Then Nina meets the customer who decides her fate, a rough guy who takes her home to his fancy house (“going up the driveway seemed to take longer than getting there”) to meet his good-looking wife (“nothing suburban or matronly going on, which was a decided relief”). Rough trade turns to horrible as Nina is forced to witness the man’s sadistic treatment of his spouse before he turns on her. Shockingly, Nina comes back for more, motivated by true human sympathy for the wife. Ingrid’s self-loathing prompts Nina to stay with her and even to suggest that she try to make a break and get away. The two women begin a love affair that stirs the apparently influential husband to vengeance; he has Nina arrested, then incarcerated in solitary confinement, which probably would have lasted forever if not for the loving intervention her counselor and therapist, Beth. The story constantly piques your expectations, but the denouement is never assured, though you’re sure it will be gruesome and brutal. Despite her penchant for slurry colloquial sentence fragments, Lewis is an enormously compelling writer: astute, risky, and unapologetic.
Unsettling in its depiction of sadistic sex acts and hauntingly sad in its portrayal of a lonely soul tittering on the edge of emotional oblivion.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2004
ISBN: 1-85242-456-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
