An offbeat, entertaining look at timeworn mythical characters.
A world of imaginary beings faces a possible homicide in Betts’ (The Shadow Beneath the Waves, 2018, etc.) fantasy mystery.
Abe is a working stiff whose job is to be an Imaginary Friend to a child for as long as he or she needs him. But it’s clear by Abe’s fourth assignment that he’s lost interest in the work; he’s no longer concerned with appeasing his current “selfish little brat,” as he puts it. He returns to the Hill, a place for the Imaginaries, which also include Gods, Boogeymen, and Aliens. It’s separate from the Otherworld, where humans reside. The Council, comprised of Father Time, Mother Nature, and Death, decides that Abe is due for another gig, so they make him the Hill’s first investigator. Abe is surely qualified, as he was once an Imaginary Friend to a kid named Truman, who’s now an adult policeman. It seems that an Imaginary named Ira has died, which hasn’t ever happened before on the Hill. Abe looks into Ira’s unexplained demise with help from his pals Brady (a Bigfoot) and Zane (a Boogeyman). The investigation eventually leads Abe to shocking revelations, including a few choice items about himself. Betts immediately roots his fantastical characters in the day-to-day routine of the Hill; for example, it’s explained that the Council first began rotating jobs primarily so the Gods would have something to do. Readers hoping for a substantial murder mystery, though, may be disappointed, as the story quickly shifts to Abe’s investigation of the Hill’s past and present. However, this is an engrossing storyline on its own. The moments of humor are well-earned, and Brady and Zane are standouts: Their interview method is simply to ask people if they killed the victim. The ending manages to be both fascinating and endearing.
An offbeat, entertaining look at timeworn mythical characters.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947879-04-1
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Dog Star Books
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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