A well-written, thoughtful treatment not just of a popular literary trope but of a nagging social issue.
A humorous and surprising satire of both the zombie apocalypse and the culture of addiction.
Bill, a middle-aged man once poised for a promising career in politics, greets several winners of the New York Lottery. It’s become his dubious honor to calm the winners down and get them prepared for the requisite press conference. The characters are always the same: overweight and all too ready to take the lump sum and blow the winnings as quickly as possible. But the striking Courtney catches his eye. He sees there is something different about her. Young and apparently strong, he figures she’ll actually be wise enough to collect her money over time. Bill is so well-rendered and the set piece of the conference—its humanity, humor and banality—so convincing that by the time the lottery winners, reporters and staff members (eventually, the entire city) are brutally ravaged by zombies, it actually comes across as an enjoyable shock. Despite its grizzly gore, the zombie apocalypse here is worn rather lightly, and as Bill and Courtney face their travails in a destroyed city and ponder what has kept them alive, the deeper layers of both humor and allegory arise. Bill and Courtney discover that, despite differences in age and experience, both their lives have been colored by alcoholism and addiction. Courtney, though not seemingly an addict, was reared in the environment of addiction. As they make their way through and away from the city, they collect other survivors, one of the more interesting being a young man they find in a jail cell. He convinces the group that he’s not a killer but a drug dealer by trade, just trying to make his way through the recession. Though somewhat derivative in its treatment of the zombie mythos, the novel’s final passages—with a sharp focus on survivors still learning to deal with addiction and the consequences of self-reliance, denial and dependence—are wholly original and a satisfying end. Despite it being yet another foray into the land of the undead, the care taken in both characterization and prose earns the reader’s time.
A well-written, thoughtful treatment not just of a popular literary trope but of a nagging social issue.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0991066810
Page Count: 238
Publisher: HOW Club Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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