An often entertaining but usually uninvolving spirit-quest fantasy.
A schlub spends many lives figuring out where he went wrong in this lightweight reincarnation adventure.
Manus, a crass, slightly bigoted 41-year-old CPA, has a great relationship with his Corvette, but almost none with his wife and kids. When he’s killed in a collision with a Sikh ice-cream-truck driver, he finds himself adrift in the afterlife with his wisecracking great-grandmother, Oma, assigned as his “spirit sherpa” to guide him toward enlightenment. She might also be an ancient Hun warrior. Manus’ spiritual curriculum requires him to be reborn as a series of characters, including a Polish Jew packed off to Auschwitz in a cattle car, an African-American ex-con trying to spruce up an inner-city park, and a teenage Australian girl out for a glorious day’s surfing. In each scene, a life lesson is learned (love God, love your community, love the waves), after which a swift demise (shot by Nazi, stabbed by punk, chomped by shark) sends Manus’s spirit on to a new vessel. In between incarnations, Manus and Oma hang out on the Other Side, a paradise where he receives personal-growth tutorials from Albert Einstein, Elvis and Wilt Chamberlain. The author pens a half-serious, half-farcical picaresque that’s a kaleidoscope of well-observed bits of history, sketchy philosophical musings and jokey supernatural whimsy. There are a few funny vignettes, including a raucous marital spat between Manus and his widow conducted through a put-upon psychic medium. There are also many draggy passages of New Age catechism: “You learn from each life, you evolve, becom[ing] more attuned with the universal force,” says an “amorphous spirit.” The novel’s center lies in Manus’ experiences of moral crises in lives unfamiliar to him; the most substantial of these, like the story of an Iraqi romance that crosses hostile sectarian boundaries, achieve real emotional depth. Unfortunately, the ongoing reincarnation device ushers Manus on so glibly that the various characters’ life-and-death traumas—and the lessons they are meant to impart—lose their dramatic force.
An often entertaining but usually uninvolving spirit-quest fantasy.Pub Date: May 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1470056902
Page Count: 172
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A new and contemplative take on the vampire novel.
Following a vampire across more than 200 years, this novel considers “whether this world and life in it is a kindness or an unkindness, a blessing or a curse.”
At the age of 10, Anna faces illness and death daily as an epidemic sweeps through her town. After the deaths of her father and brother, and when she's at her sickest, her grandfather arrives. Just as she’s about to succumb to the illness that killed her whole family, he transforms her into a vampire like himself. When she asks him why he did it, he replies: “This world, my dear child, all of it, right to the very end if there is to be an end, is a gift. But it’s a gift few are strong enough to receive. I made a judgment that you might be among those strong few, that you might be better served on this side of things than the other. I thought you might find some use for the world, and it for you.” The years that follow are difficult and often wrought with loss for Anna. She lives many lives over the centuries and eventually takes on the name Collette LaSange, opening a French preschool in Millstream Hollow, New York. Chapters alternate between Anna’s life beginning in the 1830s and her current life in 1984 as Collette. Notable points of tension arise when Collette tries unsuccessfully to sate her hunger, which is becoming increasingly unbearable, and as her interest in the artistic growth of a student named Leo deepens. Through decadently vivid prose—which could have been streamlined at times—this hefty novel meditates on major themes such as life, love, and death with exceptional acumen. The final questions in the book—“How presumptuous is the gift of life? What arrogance is implicit in the act of love that calls another into existence?”—serve as an anchor to meditations on these themes found throughout.
A new and contemplative take on the vampire novel.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781250856760
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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