Hynd's latest entry in the horror genre (A Room for the Dead, 1994, not reviewed): an uneven tale of past lives, guardian spirits, and treachery that's marked by both the best and the worst qualities of the author's spy novels. When Connecticut suburbanite Rebecca Moore is run off the road, shot at, and nearly killed by a beastlike stranger, the police have doubts that anyone was really trying murder her. Nonetheless, it seems a good time for Rebecca's husband, Bill, to take that job offered by his old college roommate in California. And so Bill, Rebecca, and children Patrick and Karen go to West Los Angeles, where they buy a Queen Anne house right next to the old San Angelo Cemetery. Later, confused by her husband's increasing coldness, Rebecca is floored when her children tell her that a man, ``Ronny,'' has been coming to keep an eye on them and will soon take them away. The children, in fact, do disappear one evening in the company of this ghostlike being: a creature Rebecca later discovers to be Billy Carlton, a silent-movie star, murdered over a half-century earlier, whose body recently burst out of its coffin in San Angelo, hurling a two-ton gravestone 60 feeta fact most intriguing to LAPD Detective Edmund Van Allen. Things heat up when the man who tried to kill Rebecca before comes to town gunning for her again, and Billy/``Ronny'' shows Van Allen who was really behind the plot to murder her, getting a little belated justice for himself while he's at it. Chilling ghost scenes enrich Hynd's suspense-powered plot, but disposable characters and subplots may inspire some to close the graveyard gates mid-service.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8217-5029-1
Page Count: 355
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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