Indeterminate endings undermine a set of otherwise carefully rendered pieces.
A collection of seven curiously crafted tales of malevolence and melancholia.
Lamb’s imagination runs dark, and his stories of haunted lives, repressed memories and sordid pasts creep into the psyche like spiders. The lead story, “You Must Remember This,” features a frustrated woman getting distasteful memories of her daughter systematically erased from her mind. Its themes closely mirror those of the abortion controversy, and this deeply disturbing piece sets the tone for the ensuing stories. All start out strong and feature richly drawn characters but then end abruptly. Only two of the seven tales, both involving handguns, employ this literary device effectively: “Mixed State” and “Grand Guignol” both build to explosive conclusions that are stronger because they aren’t spelled out. One ends: “When the woman pleaded, ‘Please put the gun away; stop pointing it at me,’ Sylvia lowered the .38 so it was pointed at the desk instead of the princess cut diamond, but she told the woman, ‘I can’t put it away because it’s all I have left.’ ” In this case, less is, indeed, more. The same, however, cannot be said for other tales, which, instead of resonating, feel unrealized. In “Pigeon Roost,” for example, a young boy is given the responsibility of warning the rest of his village about an impending Indian attack. In the context of a larger work, the story would make for a fine chapter, but here, it simply doesn’t have enough depth to stand on its own. “Station Approach,” which concludes the collection, is by far the most fully realized and structurally sound tale. This story, about a man who decides to visit his deceased partner’s son, has vivid characters and a sly narrative, as well as a satisfying twist that almost makes up for its open-ended conclusion.
Indeterminate endings undermine a set of otherwise carefully rendered pieces.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492990468
Page Count: 58
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in...
Huzzah! Martin (The Ice Dragon, 2014, etc.) delivers just what fans have been waiting for: stirring tales of the founding of the Targaryen line.
Duncan—Dunk for short—has his hapless moments. He’s big, nearly gigantic, “hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen.” Uncertain of himself, clumsy, and alone in the world, he has every one of the makings of a hero, if only events will turn in that direction. They do, courtesy of a tiny boy who steals into the “hedge knight” Dunk’s life and eventually reveals a name to match that of Ser Duncan the Tall—an altogether better name, at that, than Duncan of Flea Bottom would have been. Egg, as the squire calls himself, has a strange light about him, as if he will be destined to go on to better things, as indeed he will. Reminiscent of a simpler Arthur Rackham, the illustrations capture that light, as they do the growing friendship between Dunk and Egg—think Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues, if your knowledge of basketball matches your interest in fantasy. This being Martin, that friendship will not be without its fraught moments, its dangers and double crosses and knightly politics. There are plenty of goopily violent episodes as well, from jousts (“this time Lord Leo Tyrell aimed his point so expertly he ripped the Grey Lion’s helm cleanly off his head”) to medieval torture (“Egg…used the hat to fan away the flies. There were hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the still, hot air.”). Throughout, Martin delivers thoughtful foreshadowing of the themes and lineages that will populate his Ice and Fire series, in which Egg, it turns out, is much less fragile than he seems.
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in addition, they succeed in making fans want more—and with luck, Martin will oblige them with more of these early yarns.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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