by Paul Gore ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2018
An impressive assortment of lithe, charming tales.
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Life presents unexpected changes and romantic entanglements for characters populating this short story collection.
This book opens with “The Cow That Jumped Over the Moon,” in which Melvin and Doreen McCook move from Phoenix to Bethel, Colorado, to buy and run a movie theater. Unfortunately, the theater doesn’t make much profit, as it’s 1980, during the rise of home media. But things change after Melvin saves a cow at a cattle auction; his new bovine companion becomes a local celebrity who may draw some business. J.D. Carpenter is likewise struggling with his small-town newspaper in “Dusty Feet,” also set in Bethel. He ultimately comes to the aid of Kofi Abel, an Ethiopian in town, to find Pad Hornung. Kofi knows Pad from his missionary work. But Kofi inadvertently stirs up J.D.’s past, including his two failed marriages. Other characters face tribulations far from home. Winston, for example, of “The Call of the Russalki,” is isolated in the South China Sea for a site survey. He’s surprised when he sees another boat; according to the skipper, it’s a scientific expedition, which entails an unusual, all-female crew, each clad in bikini tops and shorts. This tale is followed by “Christmas in July.” In it, Mason Morrison is an American writer in London who starts volunteering at Lulworth Court, essentially a nonprofit holiday spot for the disabled. But what’s Mason to do when his fling with a volunteer becomes something more? Gore’s (Ghosting the Willamette, 2017, etc.) book is an appealing, often endearing collection of nine stories. The majority of the characters are immensely likable. Melvin is so worried about Doreen’s reaction to his cattle purchase, as they’re financially strapped, that he avoids her for as long as possible. He even names the cow Emma, after a beloved girlfriend who died in an auto accident decades ago. Similarly, young Orion of “Tutledge” is a junior ranger who keeps an eye on his town’s wooded area via his watch tower (in actuality, a hay loft). The author writes in an uncomplicated, grounded style that adds credibility to the characters and tales. For example, romance in “Christmas” is a combination of lyricism and mere observation: “They looked up at the clouds moving across the darkening sky, and at some point, her hand found its way into his.” This further applies to humor throughout the book as well as occasional hints of the otherworldly. Comedy comes in the form of largely familiar situations, such as the mother in “The Great Rabbit Round-up,” who embodies her typical anger by clomping around in her novelty pair of Dutch wooden shoes. Likewise, there are a few instances of something seemingly supernatural, but they are ambiguous and could be merely taking place inside characters’ heads. Serious topical issues do crop up in the stories, and Gore wisely doesn’t treat them mildly. The most notable of these is “Tick!” about a boy with an apparent mental disorder who deals with tactless neighbors.
An impressive assortment of lithe, charming tales.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984174-47-5
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by Paul Gore
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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by Donna Tartt
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by Donna Tartt
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
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