MEATSPACE

Name: MEATSPACE
Author: Nikesh Shukla
ISBN: 978-0-00-813756-4

by Nikesh Shukla ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2015

Literary and well aware of it, Shukla’s novel is a charming, sometimes-satirical take on the narratives we create about...

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Doubles and dramatic stylistic shifts abound in this novel about a young writer’s misadventures in romance, with his family, and on social media.

Kitab Balasubramanyam, the narrator of Shukla’s (largely) comic and self-aware novel, is a writer with a number of problems: his brother, Aziz, has decamped for an adventure in New York; his father is bothering him for dating advice; and a young man who shares his name has entered his life, sometimes endearingly clueless, sometimes appearing to be a terrifying stalker. Interspersed with Kitab’s story are Aziz’s adventures, which take on a very different tone. Literary references abound, including Will Self and Martin Amis, as well as Kitab’s favorite book, which is strongly implied to be Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. These are all books that a young, edgy writer would likely embrace, but they’re also there for more metafictional reasons. Palahniuk’s penchant for unreliable narrators, Self’s games in worldbuilding, and Amis’ fondness for ambiguity—think, especially, of Money—can all be seen as stylistic antecedents for what Shukla is doing here. And given the array of doubles and doppelgängers, and a meditation on the difference between online identities and our identities in the physical world (hence the novel’s title), Shukla leaves the reader with plenty to ponder. Shukla does a good job of making both the object of Kitab’s affection and his ex-girlfriend characters with their own lives and concerns; this is a novel that shows, but does not share, its narrator’s anxieties. Less successful is the prefacing of all of Kitab’s chapters with his Internet search history. It’s an amusing touch but one that never gets inside his head the way the rest of the novel does.

Literary and well aware of it, Shukla’s novel is a charming, sometimes-satirical take on the narratives we create about ourselves and those around us.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-00-813756-4

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GOOD IMMIGRANT
edited by Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.