An unreliable narrator maintains a dubious tone that still manages to electrify.
James’ psychological thriller debut offers the tale of a young woman in an interrogation room, recapping a drug-fueled crime spree spanning nine U.S. states.
Texas cops have a disheveled, bloody girl at the station for questioning. The unnamed girl’s been eluding the law for quite some time with her sometimes-lover Noah. The couple steal liquor and boost cars, criminal acts that ultimately escalate into bank robberies and burning down a church. These deeds lead to a death or two, including an accidental shooting in the course of a robbery. The girl’s probably being insincere in her statement, as it’s clearly a chore for her not to laugh when Officer Gibson treats her like the victim. But authorities really want to know where still-on-the-lam Noah is, and a fed known only as the Agent (or simply Agent) isn’t as easy for the girl to toy with as Gibson. He’s blunt and to the point: is Noah even alive? Alcohol and LSD, however, may have muddled the girl’s memories, as she debates whether she’s remembering certain events or if they’re only in her mind. Agent’s simultaneously working the case of a serial killer calling himself Alighieri; his method is decapitation. But before Agent can reach the truth, Alighieri’s and the girl’s paths intersect in a frightening and unexpected way. The purposefully ambiguous narrative complements the girl’s hazy recollections. Seeing her green-eyed, “grimacing twin” in a bathroom, for example, could be an acid trip, and the first-person perspective makes it clear that at least her confusion’s genuine. At the same time, additional points of view ground the story, like Alighieri on the hunt or Agent at different murder scenes. James’ frenzied writing style is staggering. The girl’s downtime at a quarry, for one, is just as exhilarating as the couple fleeing cops: “My limbs were pulled apart with violent force from the churning water as it surged from my intrusion.” Readers hoping for a nice, clean wrap-up to explain everything may be disappointed. Regardless, it’s a suitable ending for Agent, Alighieri, and the girl, despite not having all the answers when the story’s over.
An unreliable narrator maintains a dubious tone that still manages to electrify.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5197-2926-2
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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