One wishes for a slightly—ahem—tastier and less flabby gathering. But if zombies are your cup of meat, this is just the...
“They sat like people asleep with their eyes open, staring, but seeing nothing.” A Tea Party rally? No, no: A clutch of zombies, the stars of Penzler’s (The Vampire Archives, 2009, etc.) latest mega-anthology.
Zombies are the latest big thing, of course, at least in filmdom. But whereas the zombies of the movies now move quickly, eat all body parts indiscriminately and explode very nicely, the zombies of literature (pulp, mostly) are a slower and ever so slightly more stately bunch of ghouls. Consider Penzler’s starting point, a story from 1929 called “Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields,” in which you’d have to look very hard to see that those unseeing, eyes-wide-open folks were truly the walking undead and not, in fact, merely suffering from a bad hangover after one too many mojitos. Many of Penzler’s selections are variations on a very limited theme: A traveler to some torrid country down Caribbean way finds, to his or her horror, that the locals are creepy-crawly types, “grayed to the hue of putrescent bone,” as writes one Arthur Leo Zagat—whether a forerunner of the restaurant guides, alas, we do not know, though the author of that starting-point tale did, Penzler delights in telling us, indulge in cannibalism. Some of Penzler’s choices are arguable: Sure, Guy De Maupassant’s story “Was It a Dream?” sports a mention of a poor schmo walking “with extended arms, knocking against the tombs,” but it’s a stretch, probably, to include it in the canon of zombie lit. Inarguably zombielicious, though, are Karen Haber’s latter-day tale “Red Angels,” with its sly good humor (“The best artist in Haiti is some sort of undead thing that just drools and paints”), Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg’s very strange short story “The Song the Zombie Sang,” and H.P. Lovecraft’s spooky (natch) confection “Herbert West—Reanimator.” On the down side, Penzler does not satisfactorily explain his criteria for inclusion, and there are a couple of iffy picks, including the endless “Z is for Zombie”; his introduction is glancing, and some fine recent tales (notably Max Brooks’ World War Z) go unnoticed.
One wishes for a slightly—ahem—tastier and less flabby gathering. But if zombies are your cup of meat, this is just the thing.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-74089-2
Page Count: 827
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
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