In a second collection—set mostly in the US but also in London, Wales, Amsterdam, and Spain—Wiggins (John Dollar, 1989; Herself in Love, 1987) brings together three stories about mortality, a couple of parodistic but effective voice pieces, and several others that get lost in wordplay. ``Grocer's Daughter,'' a moving memoir (``I am shameless in the way I love my father'') intersplices a matter-of-fact narrative with lists. ``Angels,'' about an abandoned child left with her Greek grandmother Fanny in ``the hottest place in all Virginia,'' uses a slew of relatives and long dense passages to convey the tumbledown reality of a child, ``the women disappearing from the family right and left like pocket money.'' Likewise, the very brief ``A Cup of Jo'' juxtaposes old man Harry's search for words to bring alive a long-ago morning of trout fishing with a young niece's attempts to understand him after his apparent stroke. Of the rest, ``Balloons 'n Tunes'' is a tour de force about an old man, Carl Tanner, who keeps talking to his wife after her death, much to the consternation of nosy neighbor Dolores. ``Bio Slepcu'' uses a sleazy voice out of film noir to capture, as though in amber, a womanizer (who ``robbed them blind, of bits of selves'') meeting a former lover who's very sick. The others are either episodic or so odd-angled in their linguistic trickery that they remain strange and incomplete, resulting in long liquid passages of punning prose (``Eso Es'') or clever metafictional repartee (``Zelf Paortret'') but not much else. An interesting exception is ``Croeso I Gymru,'' about a couple on the lam in Wales—a story that compellingly captures the flavor of exile. Some of these, then, remain too strange or come off as too clever by half, but Wiggins is always adroit and sometimes haunting in her effects.
Pub Date: June 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-06-016139-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though all the surface elements are in place, Picoult falters in her exploration of what turns a quiet kid into a murderer.
Picoult’s 14th novel (after The Tenth Circle, 2006, etc.) of a school shooting begins with high-voltage excitement, then slows by the middle, never regaining its initial pace or appeal.
Peter Houghton, 17, has been the victim of bullying since his first day of kindergarten, made all the more difficult by two factors: In small-town Sterling, N.H., Peter is in high school with the kids who’ve tormented him all his life; and his all-American older brother eggs the bullies on. Peter retreats into a world of video games and computer programming, but he’s never able to attain the safety of invisibility. And then one day he walks into Sterling High with a knapsack full of guns, kills ten students and wounds many others. Peter is caught and thrown in jail, but with over a thousand witnesses and video tape of the day, it will be hard work for the defense to clear him. His attorney, Jordan McAfee, hits on the only approach that might save the unlikable kid—a variation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by bullying. Thrown into the story is Judge Alex Cormier, and her daughter Josie, who used to be best friends with Peter until the popular crowd forced the limits of her loyalty. Also found dead was her boyfriend Matt, but Josie claims she can’t remember anything from that day. Picoult mixes McAfee’s attempt to build a defense with the mending relationship of Alex and Josie, but what proves a more intriguing premise is the response of Peter’s parents to the tragedy. How do you keep loving your son when he becomes a mass murderer? Unfortunately, this question, and others, remain, as the novel relies on repetition (the countless flashbacks of Peter’s victimization) rather than fresh insight. Peter fits the profile, but is never fully fleshed out beyond stereotype. Usually so adept at shaping the big stories with nuance, Picoult here takes a tragically familiar event, pads it with plot, but leaves out the subtleties of character.
Though all the surface elements are in place, Picoult falters in her exploration of what turns a quiet kid into a murderer.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-7434-9672-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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