An ambitious, disquieting and majestic debut.
In Rickert’s debut novel, a composer’s ability to nearly reproduce the sounds of “Astral Music” brings him in contact with a bizarre group of musicians.
During this novel’s “Overture,” a “fist-sized mass the purplish color of a newborn baby emerge[s] from [an] instrument’s bowels.” Not all the text that follows is as consistently gruesome, but that event is a harbinger of terrors to come. Readers who prefer not to suspend their disbelief, beware; others, prepare for a fantastic, twisted update on Southern Gothic horror. Its would-be hero is San Diego composer Cameron Blake, whose musical talents are being squandered scoring bad television shows when he receives a visitor with “eyes that sparkled like chips of blue ice”: Leonin Bloom, the conductor of a chamber orchestra in Holloway, Tennessee. Bloom explains that Cameron isn’t the only person who has heard “music from the Other Side” (which the composer experienced after a childhood car accident), but he is the one who’s come closest to replicating it. Intrigued, Cameron follows Bloom to Tennessee, where he meets an orchestra of preternaturally old, rancid-smelling musicians and encounters Bloom’s collection of grotesquely shaped musical instruments, with features such as skulls and “demon-faced scrolls.” As Cameron’s compositional work gets underway—with the aid of a special tuning fork that lets the musicians attain inner harmony—he also meets several residents of Holloway, including Simon, an immense, extremely talented violinist with no ears; Hob, a janitor who believes his dead wife is communicating with him; and Madison, a beautiful shop owner with whom Cameron instantly connects. The overall atmosphere of Rickert’s novel is impressive, as is its often shocking plot. The author’s skill is most evident in his depiction of his characters, who seem instantly recognizable, even in brief appearances. As a result, their uneasy fates may disappoint some readers. (One horrendous assault early in the novel is unshakably discomforting.) When events take on epic, heaven-and-hell proportions, none of the characters is safe—but that same sense of consequence also results in an excellent work.
An ambitious, disquieting and majestic debut.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939371423
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Boutique of Quality Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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