Follows old trails, yet everything you come upon seems absolutely new. A real wonder.
Witt’s first outing, told by a middle sibling, is the story of a North Carolina family, dysfunctional in touching and sometimes very amusing ways.
Morgan-Lee is 15, though she takes us back to earlier years as a way of letting us know who everyone is—and they’re quite a bunch. Her slightly older brother Ginx, for starters, is brilliant but autistic, loved intensely by Morgan-Lee, who both wants his praise and wants to protect him—in spite of his often attacking her with pummels that leave real bruises. Younger Dana is the “normal” one, interested in boys but not in her high-mannered, always-exhausted, neurasthenic and hypercritical mother: in fact, Dana has taken to living mainly at the house of ditzy but welcoming Aunt Lois, who gives cosmetic make-overs and affects knowledge of all things about romance, though her husband, Uncle Pete, is if anything an uncut gem. Morgan-Lee’s bumbling and mild-mannered father completes the roster—that is, until the tall and slim girl from the wrong side of the tracks, with the name of Sweety-Boy, appears one day selling her homemade jellies and jams. Dana’s delight on learning that Sweety-Boy is the sister—well, half-sister—of 16-year-old garage mechanic Jacob leads to a party invitation at Sweety-Boy and Jacob’s place. Things go mighty fast from then on—including the party itself, which may be the most brilliantly described, and outright hilarious, portrait of kids and alcohol ever. The portrait deepens, though, as Morgan-Lee takes upon herself the “protection” of Dana and has her own long night’s encounter with Jacob (another flawless, pitch-perfect section). Serious trouble follows from the jealous—and, yup, incestuous, plus more—Sweety-Boy, who gets vengeance (in just the right amount, though) on Morgan-Lee in a most interesting way before the tale’s perfectly sad and very funny close.
Follows old trails, yet everything you come upon seems absolutely new. A real wonder.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-8050-7595-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Despite some distractions, there’s an irresistible charm to Owens’ first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction.
A wild child’s isolated, dirt-poor upbringing in a Southern coastal wilderness fails to shield her from heartbreak or an accusation of murder.
“The Marsh Girl,” “swamp trash”—Catherine “Kya” Clark is a figure of mystery and prejudice in the remote North Carolina coastal community of Barkley Cove in the 1950s and '60s. Abandoned by a mother no longer able to endure her drunken husband’s beatings and then by her four siblings, Kya grows up in the careless, sometimes-savage company of her father, who eventually disappears, too. Alone, virtually or actually, from age 6, Kya learns both to be self-sufficient and to find solace and company in her fertile natural surroundings. Owens (Secrets of the Savanna, 2006, etc.), the accomplished co-author of several nonfiction books on wildlife, is at her best reflecting Kya’s fascination with the birds, insects, dappled light, and shifting tides of the marshes. The girl’s collections of shells and feathers, her communion with the gulls, her exploration of the wetlands are evoked in lyrical phrasing which only occasionally tips into excess. But as the child turns teenager and is befriended by local boy Tate Walker, who teaches her to read, the novel settles into a less magical, more predictable pattern. Interspersed with Kya’s coming-of-age is the 1969 murder investigation arising from the discovery of a man’s body in the marsh. The victim is Chase Andrews, “star quarterback and town hot shot,” who was once Kya’s lover. In the eyes of a pair of semicomic local police officers, Kya will eventually become the chief suspect and must stand trial. By now the novel’s weaknesses have become apparent: the monochromatic characterization (good boy Tate, bad boy Chase) and implausibilities (Kya evolves into a polymath—a published writer, artist, and poet), yet the closing twist is perhaps its most memorable oddity.
Despite some distractions, there’s an irresistible charm to Owens’ first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1909-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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