EXPLORERS OF THE NEW CENTURY

Name: EXPLORERS OF THE NEW CENTURY
Author: Magnus Mills
ISBN: 0-15-603078-0

by Magnus Mills ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2006

The story never fully coheres or satisfies. But it does suggest that, despite Mills’s evident debts to Kafka and Beckett,...

bookshelf

A courageous and perhaps futile quest is the immediate, though not exclusive, subject of the sly British minimalist’s brain-squeezing fifth novel.

As he did in such tricky parables as The Restraint of Beasts (1998) and Three to See the King (2001), Mills builds ominous resonance into a seemingly simple situation from which essential clarifying details are withheld. It’s a race between two teams of explorers to reach, by different overland routes, a goal identified only as the Agreed Furthest Point. Both dialogue and incidental particulars suggest the late Victorian period, and the reader inevitably thinks of the historic contest to reach the North Pole waged by Englishman Robert Falcon Scott and Norwegian Roald Amundsen. For the leader of one expedition is Tostig, whose crewmen bear such Nordic-sounding names as Thegn, Snaebjorn and Thorsson, and are pragmatic, focused veteran explorers. Tostig’s rival is the quintessential Brit Johns, a bit of a ditherer, whose crew are a rather more disorganized lot, prone to strategic errors and internal dissension. Hardships dog both expeditions, in a bleak landscape which—a gnomic “Theory of Transportation” (consulted by both leaders) implies—may be the consequence of an unspecified global catastrophe. Then, Mills introduces the “mules,” which both parties are transporting, safely away from human contact. Yet the mules talk, reason, argue. Are they in fact humans? Are the supposed voyages of exploration actually passages traveled by slave ships (albeit by land)? (Tostig is a dictatorial, merciless martinet.) The absence of a clear resolution permits these and other interpretive possibilities to dance perversely in the reader’s mind, as Mills calmly pulls strings, leading us—along with his essentially clueless characters— toward—just possibly?—nowhere. Which is, perhaps, where all schemes of conquest and exploitation ultimately arrive.

The story never fully coheres or satisfies. But it does suggest that, despite Mills’s evident debts to Kafka and Beckett, he’s still a provocative, elusive original.

Pub Date: March 20, 2006

ISBN: 0-15-603078-0

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MAINTENANCE OF HEADWAY
by Magnus Mills

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SCHEME FOR FULL EMPLOYMENT
by Magnus Mills

- BOOK REVIEW
THREE TO SEE THE KING
by Magnus Mills

bookshelf

MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

bookshelf

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.