Select passages of assured writing distinguish this otherwise ordinary debut novel of family drama. Danny Fillian is 11 in 1963 when her parents buy a run-down cabin rather than the pristine beach house that her architect father admires in Rainy Lake, N.J. In ensuing chapters Danny chronicles the summers up to 1970 as she, her parents, and her older brother, Bryan, settle into the summer community. Rockcastle carefully fills in gaps about the in-between months as well, creating an excessively concrete and plot-driven narrative whose action feels more planned from above than motivated by the characters' personalities. The author weaves in recurring themes but often heavily telegraphs future activity. When in 1964 Danny meets the boy who will become her first love—the bookish girl drops her copy of Jane Eyre in the water, and he retrieves it for her—the moment is played up with irritating insistence; clearly the 12-year-old will have to wait a few more chapters before they can get together. Romance has a prefabricated feel in this novel, which offers someone for everyone except Danny's parents, who grow apart as her father's drinking intensifies. In the background, the '60s are heating up and—as expected—intergenerational tension ensues. Danny's voice is occasionally startling enough to jolt the proceedings, particularly when the now-adult narrator demonstrates her maturity. Spare, quiet imagery (``Memory is a little like the rosary beads I keep wrapped up in the back of my bureau drawer'') adds impact but is too infrequent, as are Danny's flashes of humor and individuality. Her personality comes through when she saves the condom from the first time she has intercourse in the same box that harbors childhood paraphernalia like her first pair of nylons and her birthday cards, but more often she just seems stiff. No day at the beach, but not a total washout.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55597-218-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
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