Energetic stories unveil limitless possibilities always within reach.
A collection offers tales populated by families, lovers, and pariahs who brave worlds both real and illusory.
There’s a sense of aspiration throughout this book, stamped on the opening title story. It fuses the otherworldly with the familiar, the mermaid and robot who can hope for enduring love just like humans. Characters in subsequent stories achieve the seemingly impossible: an Elvis fan transforms into the King in his parents’ basement in “Cardboard Graceland,” and according to “Extinction Event,” dinosaurs may have set up civilization elsewhere. Others simply defy expectations. The law firm’s new hulking, pungent temp in “Bigfoot’s Overcoat,” for example, becomes a hub for everyone’s secrets. Likewise, in the novella The Dead Dream of Being Undead, a family perseveres despite fires destroying the neighborhood and the oldest brother leaving to help secure a zombie quarantine in Muncie, Indiana. Intermittent signs of creatures or sci-fi touches are undoubtedly metaphorical, but these elements are just as edifying when taken literally. The Snow Man in “A Monster for Always,” for one, terrifies adults who don’t know him but delights as a mere companion for siblings Sean and Meghan, who let him stay in their shed. In “Rollo is Rollo,” a guy allegedly abducted by aliens that reject him pre-probing certainly meshes with a fractured connection to his estranged brother, the narrator. The incident also defines the supposed victim’s nature: someone who’d rename himself monthly would probably manufacture an abduction account. Even a straightforward, albeit beautiful tale such as “Plain Burial” subverts convention. In it, Sam’s beloved dog, Bentley, dies while they’re on the road, but the man refuses to bury his companion so far from home, wanting him close in mind and body. Most of Fogarty’s (Kill TV, 2014) stories are noticeably short but compact, not wasting a single sentence; the solitary-paragraph “We Are Swimmers” begins: “Something got stirred up between us here at the bottom of this great lake.” They’re snippets of people’s lives, akin to glances out the window of a passing train. And that’s the essence of the collection: the reader is an observer of a vast universe that, like the closing “Outline of the Moon,” is recognizable, even if unexplored.
Energetic stories unveil limitless possibilities always within reach.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9905169-4-1
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Stillhouse Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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