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DAUGHTER OF ISIS

Name: DAUGHTER OF ISIS
Author: Lilian Nirupa
ISBN: 978-0-595-45682-6

A NOVEL OF THE EGYPTIAN RENAISSANCE

by Lilian Nirupa ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2007

A meandering and overindulgent book that spends too much time on the intricacies of Egyptian mysticism.

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A mystical tale about a gifted princess living at the twilight of the Egyptian Empire.

Lizla is the last in a line of powerful rulers in the Egyptian Empire. Her father, a mighty Pharaoh, was killed years before while protecting his empire from foreign invaders, and his legacy of peace and union is of great importance to Lizla. She feels the weight of her responsibility and talents at an early age. She begins training with the famous priest Ra-Ta, who recognizes her supernatural gifts and the ability to transcend the corporeal world. The priest guides Lizla into a trance, where she speaks with the Goddess Iris, her spiritual predecessor. Under Ra-Ta’s instruction, she takes residence at the Temple of Love, where she immerses herself in mystical teachings and is surrounded by other gifted students. At the Temple, she reunites with her estranged childhood love, Mikos, who is at the Temple to study medicine. All is not well at the Temple of Love, however–during a stroll through the grounds, Lizla overhears several high-ranking officials discussing an invasion from hostile foreigners. Unfortunately, the issue of the invasion never gets fully resolved, and the story becomes bogged down in tangential explanations of Egyptian philosophy and mysticism. Much of the story is spent describing Lizla’s supernatural experiences, but these become too frequent and episodic, and as a result, the story stalls at points. For the book to achieve that special, ethereal nature that other spiritual tomes achieve, the prose needs to take on a more reserved and Spartan tone, and the reader left to do his own thinking.

A meandering and overindulgent book that spends too much time on the intricacies of Egyptian mysticism.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-595-45682-6

Page Count: 167

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

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An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LITTLE BLUE KITE
by Mark Z. Danielewski

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HADES
by Mark Z. Danielewski

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HONEYSUCKLE & PAIN
by Mark Z. Danielewski

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.