“It’s a heavy millstone,” the protagonist of this sad, salty novel reflects, “to be the son of a good father.” Daly Racklin, a genial, shrewd, hard-drinking lawyer and a minor celebrity in Pittsburgh’s Irish community, has just been told, as the story opens, that he has only a few months to live. This sudden onrush of mortality makes him reflect ruefully on the ways in which he has seemingly never measured up to his father, Boyce “Right” Racklin, a legendary battler for the rights of the underdog. Tales about Right Racklin still circulate freely about the bars and church halls of Oakland Park. In truth, though, the long-suffering Daly has labored hard to be his father’s son; even after he’s been told his heart will soon give out, he takes on the defense of a hapless young man found inconveniently near the body of a murder victim. He does what he can for the wonderfully delineated collection of eccentrics who have come to depend on him. And, in a last desperate effort to express some hope in life’s continuity, he even contemplates marrying his kind, quiet lover, Jessie. Much of the novel, which shuttles restlessly around the shrinking precincts of the Irish community, is taken up with tales of a livelier, more profane past, narrated in a diction both frank and lyrical, and leavened with an unblinking, dark-tinged humor. Like Goran’s two story collections set in Oakland Park (She Loved Me Once, 1997; Tales from the Irish Club, 1996), this exhibits a melancholy sense of endings. Daly, as he contemplates his own likely end, also reflects on his sense that the insulated, vibrant Irish milieu in which he was raised is gradually disappearing, its tales and memories along with it. Against the odds, Daly manages to win several modest, poignant victories—and even come to terms with his father’s complicated legacy. An appropriately bittersweet evocation of a largely vanished world, distinguished by its ripe, vigorous language and by a moving portrait of a troubled, decent man.
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19540-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
This novel began as a reworking of W.W. Jacobs' horror classic "The Monkey's Paw"—a short story about the dreadful outcome when a father wishes for his dead son's resurrection. And King's 400-page version reads, in fact, like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable. Still, readers with a taste for the morbid and ghoulish will find unlimited dark, mortality-obsessed atmosphere here—as Dr. Louis Creed arrives in Maine with wife Rachel and their two little kids Ellie and Gage, moving into a semi-rural house not far from the "Pet Sematary": a spot in the woods where local kids have been burying their pets for decades. Louis, 35, finds a great new friend/father-figure in elderly neighbor Jud Crandall; he begins work as director of the local university health-services. But Louis is oppressed by thoughts of death—especially after a dying student whispers something about the pet cemetery, then reappears in a dream (but is it a dream) to lead Louis into those woods during the middle of the night. What is the secret of the Pet Sematary? Well, eventually old Jud gives Louis a lecture/tour of the Pet Sematary's "annex"—an old Micmac burying ground where pets have been buried. . .and then reappeared alive! So, when little Ellie's beloved cat Church is run over (while Ellie's visiting grandfolks), Louis and Jud bury it in the annex—resulting in a faintly nasty resurrection: Church reappears, now with a foul smell and a creepy demeanor. But: what would happen if a human corpse were buried there? That's the question when Louis' little son Gage is promptly killed in an accident. Will grieving father Louis dig up his son's body from the normal graveyard and replant it in the Pet Sematary? What about the stories of a previous similar attempt—when dead Timmy Baterman was "transformed into some sort of all-knowing daemon?" Will Gage return to the living—but as "a thing of evil?" He will indeed, spouting obscenities and committing murder. . .before Louis must eliminate this child-demon he has unleashed. Filled out with overdone family melodrama (the feud between Louis and his father-in-law) and repetitious inner monologues: a broody horror tale that's strong on dark, depressing chills, weak on suspense or surprise—and not likely to please the fans of King's zestier, livelier terror-thons.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1983
ISBN: 0743412281
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
BOOK TO SCREEN
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