An “experimental” novel that manages mostly to be conventionally unconventional.
Bible delivers an elliptical, provocative novella about the profane and the spiritual, all of it drenched in sweat, sex, and booze.
In the American South, a reverend named Maloney (who also narrates) guzzles booze and indulges in sexual thoughts—not model behavior, surely. He spends a lot of time drunk at church and hangs with an assortment of down-on-their-luck types—most notably, his best friend, Eli, a chess genius whom one character accuses Maloney of using for money. Is this the case? Bible tells his story in short bursts, poetic and plainspoken; he shuffles readers from place to place, catapults them from nastiness to nastiness. Gradually a story develops, but this book is about tone: sometimes vulgar, sometimes romantic, always confrontational. In service to this tone, much of the book—characters, their back stories, their motivations—feels concealed. Certainly authors have done great work in such elliptical modes—marketing copy here cites Barry Hannah and Nicholson Baker—but the uninflected style and tone also recall newer books like Young God or Nowhere, not to mention plenty of brief, broken-seeming works emerging from indie presses. Bible wants to provoke—consider Maloney’s recurring sex dreams about the Holy Ghost or a moment when he grooms his pubic hair into the shape of a cross or musings on whether or not Jesus had wet dreams—but his attempts at provoking are, well, sort of dull and conventional. Familiar in form and profane content, the novella takes no real risks. “Failure is the most interesting trait,” Bible writes early on, and he has a point. Ultimately, this novella is too cloistered, too fashionable, too safe to do much failing, and Bible’s ambition to be interesting and different disappears into the book’s ellipses.
An “experimental” novel that manages mostly to be conventionally unconventional.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61219-472-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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