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
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 suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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