Energetic and engaging, these stories benefit from the sheer vigor of their telling but ultimately propose more than they...
A debut short story collection that treads the line between the speculative and the satirical with vivid prose, fatalist joie de vivre, and wild imaginative turns.
The worlds of Andreasen’s stories are as multitudinous as the worlds of the American experience. There are space worlds—“Rockabye, Rocketboy” and “Bodies in Space,” in which two middle-management adulterers have been abducted and then replanted on Earth as living recording devices for alien ethnographers. There are ocean worlds—“Our Fathers at Sea” and the delightful title story, in which a galleon of anachronistic scallywags is slowly scuttled by an amorous squid. There are fun-house worlds—“The King’s Teacup at Rest,” “Rite of Baptism”—and worlds in which the Southern California–flavored constants of suburban sprawl, lonely interstate connectors, and the isolated interiors of middle-class lives are interrupted by saints and saviors, headless sisters, and prepubescent psychopaths transformed into living gods of fire. Throughout, the author’s pitch-perfect sense of the linguistic weird—the “sort-of-otters already bobbing in dagger-toothed flotillas,” the “parable of the independent subcontractor and the hornet’s nest”—hones the humor of these stories to an uneasy keen. Andreasen’s style is reminiscent of George Saunders at his most cynical, and yet the collection as a whole is marred by a kind of cavalier misogyny that echoes through even the most sensitively wrought stories. The women of these fictions are caretakers, porn stars, and whores. They are absent wives and headless sisters. Erased by the relentless, boisterous boy-dom of the plots, the potential in the female characters’ identities is sacrificed in service to the sight gag, the fun-house parable, the cautionary tale of male predation. It is a disappointing flaw in an otherwise impressive debut.
Energetic and engaging, these stories benefit from the sheer vigor of their telling but ultimately propose more than they produce.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-98661-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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