A most exasperating lug, this Parker. The naïf has his innocent charms, but his endless stumbles, losses, and misdirections...
A young man tries to separate the bruises from the clues in his coming-of-ager—sort of—in an understated, fitfully endearing debut.
In ten self-sustaining chapters from age 14 to mid-30s, the eternally naive Parker moves from right-field daydreams to a Spanish honeymoon without ever quite knowing what he’s supposed to do. On the baseball field in junior high, the one fly-ball that comes his way just seems to find its way into his glove: Parker takes that as a sign that he was ready for it. His big brother takes him to the gym for his first crack at weight training, after previously treating him to a dip of snuff, but he isn’t ready for either of them. Girls enter the equation when he attends a weeklong Methodist camp and gets a crush on Nicole Liarkos; but he returns home to lose his best (and only) friend. With the help of a couple of new faces in his class, one male, one female, he begins a transition to high-school punk, but that phase doesn’t last beyond a scene at the prom. College is viewed only after it’s already over for Parker: trying to recover from a breakup with a woman who’s still enrolled, he jogs endlessly past her apartment and, for money, waits tables. A move to Miami puts him next door to two strippers—and provides a failed opportunity with the gorgeous one of them. Another move, to Atlanta, puts him into the company of two other women: crazy Trina, whom he finally advises to check into an institution; and Pamela, who inflames him wildly—and is engaged to his best friend. Parker finally meets his match, Rachael, in graduate school—but not before he drops out.
A most exasperating lug, this Parker. The naïf has his innocent charms, but his endless stumbles, losses, and misdirections do wear thin.Pub Date: March 21, 2002
ISBN: 1-56512-344-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
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
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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