bookshelf

FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY

Name: FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY
Author: Mike Meginnis
ISBN: 978-1-936787-20-3

by Mike Meginnis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2014

A bold concept poorly executed.

bookshelf

Bombs become people: That’s the premise of this first novel, in which the two U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan convert themselves into human survivors.

Little Boy hit Hiroshima, Fat Man Nagasaki; those really were, historically, the bombs’ names. In post-apocalyptic Nagasaki, Fat Man is struggling with birth trauma. He’s a bloated mass, naked and hairless. Little Boy, a runt, finds him in a shelter and decides they are brothers. Among the ruins, Fat Man says, “I think we were put here for a reason.” But what exactly? There’s the rub. Meginnis has created an existential problem for which he has no solution. The novel will dip a toe into various genres (science fiction, magical realism, detective story) without settling into any of them. Thus the brothers impregnate a virgin, a farmer’s daughter, purely through their proximity. Her babies are stillborn; Fat Man kills her enraged father in self-defense. Through a GI, the brothers procure new identities and board a ship for France, where they’re taken in by a married woman. She too, without sexual contact, will bear a child (two-headed). The phenomenon is explained by a Japanese medium. The brothers are haunted by their Japanese victims, who are hoping to be reborn. Not to worry; once the brothers fall in with an American peacenik, a war widow establishing a hotel, there’ll be no more unpleasant births. Fat Man will even make a normal baby with Rosie, the widow. Years later, he’s still a tub of lard and Little Boy’s still a preteen runt, and there’s been no development that might absolve them of their guilt or make them agents of atonement. Meanwhile Meginnis has concocted another storyline involving two French cops pursuing the innocent Fat Man for the murders of pregnant women.

A bold concept poorly executed.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-936787-20-3

Page Count: 424

Publisher: Black Balloon Publishing

Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014

Categories:

DYSTOPIAN FICTION

bookshelf

WHITE HORSE

by Alex Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2012

bookshelf

A woman on the run ponders the nature of humanity as she lives through the end of the world.

Readers have gleefully suffered through the End of Days in a good many apocalyptic novels in recent years. Whether it’s zombies in World War Z, robots in Roboapacalypse or vampires in The Passage, writers suffer no shortage of inventive ways to kill us off. What debut novelist Adams brings to the scene in a planned trilogy is an unhinged but disquietly clear perspective on survivor’s guilt and the grimy nature of humanity. “It’s not just college grades that fall in a curve,” observes 30-year-old American refugee Zoe. “Human decency is bell-shaped, with some of us slopping over the edges.” Adams ramps up our end days in an increasingly horrifying amplification of events: a Chinese intervention of cellular technology; weather modification experiments gone awry; and a DNA-warping virus that halves the population at an astonishing rate. Zoe is making her way across Europe, hoping to book passage on a boat to Greece, but it’s hard traveling, especially when she discovers she’s pregnant. She and a young companion are beset by bands of predators and are stalked by a shadowy figure dubbed “The Swiss,” a murderous abortionist driven by a startling secret. With uncommon confidence, Adams flips back and forth between the present day and Zoe’s life before. She dreams of a container of horrors straight out of the Pandora myth, pieces together the (naturally) man-made origins of the plague and recounts her relationship with Nick Rose, her therapist. Adams has an excellent sense of timing, delivering gasp-inducing moments that punctuate her nightmare with verve. But it’s Zoe’s clear-eyed sense of self-preservation that will keep readers waiting for Adams’ follow-up. The novel relies heavily on biblical and Greek myths to welcome readers to Zoe’s nightmare, but it’s a small price to pay for the jolt.

Pub Date: April 10, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4516-4299-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria

Review Posted Online: March 6, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012

Categories:

THRILLER | DYSTOPIAN FICTION

bookshelf

J

by Howard Jacobson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2014

A pleasure, as reading Jacobson always is—though much different from what we’ve come to expect, which is not at all a bad...

bookshelf

Jacobson (The Finkler Question, 2010, etc.), Britain’s answer to Philip Roth, returns with an enigmatic tale of the near future.

Imagine The Children of Men appearing under the name of Fran Lebowitz, and you’ll have some sense of the dislocation Jacobson’s move from angst-y comedy to dystopian darkness might cause. Not that Jacobson’s future is all bad: In fact, the coast of a land something like Wales or Cornwall is now peppered with places with names such as Port Reuben and home to people called Morvoren Steinberg and Esme Nussbaum, “an intelligent and enthusiastic thirty-two-year-old researcher employed by Ofnow, the non-statutory monitor of the Public Mood.” For once, it seems, Jews have found a refuge and are not being killed in it, even if they’re still not entirely at home there. Born into this world is Kevern Cohen, who, deeply in love with the alluring Ailinn Solomons, finds himself puzzling over why his father impulsively drew his fingers across his mouth whenever he began a word with the letter J. Does G-d not like those who honor him with names such as Jacob and Joseph? There’s a mystery afoot there, if one less pressing than such mysteries as who killed Lowenna Morgenstern and Ythel Weinstock, “found lying side by side in the back of Ythel Weinstock's caravan in pools of each other’s blood.” Who, indeed? Kevern’s got his work cut out for him, and though everyone’s ready to talk, no one’s ready to tell. The laughs come fewer and farther between than in Jacobson’s recent string of men-lost-in-middle-age yarns, which is not to say that his latest is without humor: When one local asks Kevern whether he knows the meaning of a dialect phrase, Kevern guesses something very not nice indeed, to which the local replies, “We’ll make a local of yerz yet. Go fuck yerzelf is spot on.”

A pleasure, as reading Jacobson always is—though much different from what we’ve come to expect, which is not at all a bad thing.