A strong first collection (half of the two-book debut that includes Knight’s novel Divining Rod, to be reviewed in our next issue) offers ten unflinchingly realistic and inventive studies of the compulsive bonding of incompatible people and, most interestingly, the mysterious symbiosis between humans and animals. Even the more conventional stories’such as a child’s-eye view of adult infidelity and instability (“Amelia Earhart’s Coat”) and the complex indirect characterization of a married teacher not quite lured into his neighbors’ orbit of incessant partying and casual sex (“Sundays”)—resonate with this volume’s distinctive emphasis on hesitant personal voyages into unfamiliar emotional territories. The beneficiaries and victims of these adventures include a widowed father and his teenaged son whose separate obsessions with a beautiful (and frequently naked) next-door neighbor subtly alter their mutual dependency (in “Now You See Her”), and another teenager working on a welding crew alongside co-workers whose crotchets and obsessions he only dimly understands (“Gerald’s Monkey”: a truly enigmatic tale, powered by some very disturbing sexual undercurrents). “A Bad Man, So Pretty” vividly delineates the uncomfortable intimacy between its young narrator (“the good kid” in his family) and his trouble-making older brother. It’s reminiscent of several of Peter Taylor’s stories about introverts who are disturbed and fascinated by the misbehavior of their more mercurial and dangerous counterparts. And Knight’s most intriguing pieces boldly dramatize the changes wrought by creatures that seemingly function as guides, or instructors leading people onto new levels of experience or understanding: a young man’s sense of his own vulnerability is stimulated by the dog he “inherits” after his landlady dies in a fire, perhaps deliberately set (“Tenant”); the ordeal of a skilled mosaic craftsman unable to hold together his piecemeal relationship with a vivacious independent woman (“Sleeping with My Dog”); and the superb title story’s revelation of a divorced loner’s closeness to his ex-wife and susceptibility to even tenuous and inconclusive emotional connection. Vivid and thought-provoking fiction from an impressive new talent.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-452-27894-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.
Ware (In A Dark, Dark Wood, 2015) offers up a classic “paranoid woman” story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery.
Days before departing on a luxury cruise for work, travel journalist Lo Blacklock is the victim of a break-in. Though unharmed, she ends up locked in her own room for several hours before escaping; as a result, she is unable to sleep. By the time she comes onboard the Aurora, Lo is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and possibly even PTSD, so when she hears a big splash from the cabin next door in the middle of the night, “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water,” she can’t prove to security that anything violent has actually occurred. To make matters stranger, there's no record of any passenger traveling in the cabin next to Lo’s, even though Lo herself saw a woman there and even borrowed makeup from her before the first night’s dinner party. Reeling from her own trauma, and faced with proof that she may have been hallucinating, Lo continues to investigate, aided by her ex-boyfriend Ben (who's also writing about the cruise), fighting desperately to find any shred of evidence that she may be right. The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: a woman insists murder has occurred, everyone else says she’s crazy. But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts. Despite this successful formula, and a whole lot of slowly unraveling tension, the end is somehow unsatisfying. And the newspaper and social media inserts add little depth.
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3293-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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