An underdog tale for readers with steel nerves.
Orvis (The Place, 2015) tells a sprawling tale of a Utah family, set against the upheavals of the mid-20th century.
It’s 1950 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Rusty Van Cott has been mortally injured in a gas tank explosion, and his siblings, including his best friend and brother, Bud; his mother; and assorted in-laws surround his hospital bed. Rusty’s injuries overwhelm Bud, but the sight sends his mind tumbling through memories of riding the rails as a bum in the early 1930s, fighting the Japanese on an island during World War II, and surviving a poor childhood under the abusive rule of their alcoholic father, Kurt. The moment that shaped Bud’s life, however, was the dynamite blast that blew off several fingers. Already dyslexic and a poor speaker, the accident left him with only “buds” on one hand, with which he nevertheless became a military sharpshooter. Through most of their lives, Bud and Rusty were inseparable because they shared an understanding: Rusty was handsome, swaggering, and fearless, while Bud followed in his shadow, enjoying a spiritual awakening that nobody else in their Mormon community approved of. Author Orvis thrives on luring readers into dark corners and offers page after page of gritty Americana. Most of the chapters are from Bud’s perspective—though a few belong to his mother, Opal—and his memories flow smoothly through the eras. Segments focusing on boxcar hobos, Japanese soldiers, and Kurt’s frequently unleashed belt are studies in violence. These are balanced by scenes in Utah’s splendid wilderness; the meditative Bud says, “Nobody knew how I thought or what I felt. Maybe that’s the way I hid my power.” The story is all the more harrowing considering that many of the grisly details of the Van Cotts’ survival—like eating the neighbor’s cats—plausibly happened to some families, somewhere. The thinnest element of the narrative is Kurt, who, as the villain, deserves to be more fleshed out. Otherwise, Orvis cuts deeply indeed.
An underdog tale for readers with steel nerves.Pub Date: July 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5146-0017-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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