Blending outrÇ-dimensional, drooly-tentacled, Lovecraftian slipslop weirdness with Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, Laidlaw (Kalifornia, 1993, etc.) lays out a work far more fine- grained than Heinlein's and nearly as compelling as Lovecraft's. San Francisco hack writer Derek Crowe stumbles onto a gold mine when his latest book attracts the interest of Eli Mooney, an elderly wheelchair-bound astral voyager who invites him home. Mooney's the real thing, a seeming crackpot whose phantasmal travels have made him the channel for invading forces shaped like mandalas—``elaborate wheels with wavering arms and spiral centers.'' Aside from three arcane histories that the mandalas have dictated to him, he also owns the skin of a dead Cambodian imprinted with 37 mandalas that focus the invaders' powers. Mooney begins dictating to Crowe, then dies, and so Crowe romps off with the skin and earlier dictation. Published, the evil mandalas make Crowe a famed New Ager, although his The Mandala Rites perverts Mooney's hard-earned fatalism with fluffy New Age optimism. Himself still not believing in Mooney, Crowe writhes ``in the hair shirt of his occult hypocrisy, writing books for the praise of people he considers imbeciles.'' On a book-signing trip in North Carolina, Crowe hypnotizes Lenore, a hippie math genius, and accidentally channels in the 37th mandala, an astral jellyfish that sticks to her head. Lenore and her housemate Michael follow Crowe to San Francisco, where Club Mandala becomes the host center for the mandala invasion that Crowe doesn't believe in. While painting himself into a corner plotwise, Laidlaw strives to resolve Crowe's dilemma at the same keenly drawn level on which it is presented. Stick-fast storytelling and brilliant discursive detail about occultism. Deserves high marks indeed—and those mandalas cry out for celluloid computerization.
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-13021-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
A sweetly affirmative portrait of mother-daughter love that explores big questions while also providing a riveting narrative of a custody battle. Picoult (The Pact, 1998, etc.) sets her tale in a small New Hampshire town during the last months of 1999 and intelligently addresses, without ever becoming strident or hysterical, such charged topics as mental illness and the existence of God. When Mariah comes home early one afternoon with seven-year-old daughter Faith and surprises husband Colin in bed with another woman, her carefully constructed world threatens to fall apart. The last time Colin was unfaithful, Mariah became suicidally depressed and was hospitalized until shortly before Faith’s birth; this time, after a speedy divorce, she tries to adjust to being on her own, but soon her daughter begins behaving oddly. Faith quotes scriptures she’s never been taught, claims she is speaking to God, miraculously resurrects her grandmother Millie (declared dead after a heart attack), and cures a child with AIDS. As the faithful, the ailing, and the curious gather outside Faith and Mariah’s house, stigmata appear on the girl’s wrists and various religious representatives question her credibility. Television personality Ian Fletcher, who makes a living debunking religion, arrives to do a feature. Distressed by the turmoil and media frenzy, Colin, now remarried, blames Mariah and sues for custody. Mariah, though distraught, finds herself attracted to Ian, who has his own secrets, but before true love and justice can be done, Faith nearly dies and Mariah goes to court, where she must defend herself, her past, and her daughter against an array of hostile witnesses and skeptics. Masterfully telling a story more usually found in the tabloids, Picoult offers a perfectly pitched take on the great mysteries of the heart. Her best yet.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16825-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
The late, great, vastly prolific L'Amour (Jubal Sackett, 1985, etc.) rides again, with a recently discovered never-before-seen novella and sheaf of stories. Most of the tales feature Homeric diction and wonderful hooks. ``Caprock Rancher'' begins: ``When I rode up to the buffalo wallow, Pa was lying there with his leg broke and his horse gone.'' ``Desperate Men'' opens with: ``They were four desperate men, made hard by life, cruel by nature, and driven to desperation by imprisonment. Yet the walls of Yuma Prison were strong and the rifle skill of the guards unquestioned, so the prison held many desperate men besides these four. And when prison walls and rifles failed, there was the desert, and the desert never failed.'' That's a big, gritty voice at work, lifting melodrama to the heavens of storytelling. And, for the most part, these stories cleave to that voice throughout. ``Caprock Rancher'' tells of a 17-year-old who must rescue $20,000 from three toughs who have found it, although it belongs to several poor ranchers back home who've trusted the boy and his father to take their cattle to market. ``Desperate Men'' follows four prisoners who escape from Yuma Prison during an earthquake and flee into the desert with an Army payroll. Their greed is as much against them as the sun. In the title tale, a young man who heads a cattle drive finds wooing a beautiful woman to be more fraught with difficulty (and danger) than life on the trail. And in the superbly burnished novella, ``Rustler Roundup,'' the Laird Valley cattle war pits some smart rustlers, who want to grab Finn Mahone's herd and acres, against an even smarter hero. As ever, L'Amour's characters distinguish themselves from run-of-the- mill westerners by the hard thud of their boots on soil and the worn leather ease of their dialogue. Awesome immediacy, biting as creosote slapped on a fencepost.
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-10648-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
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