A frank, funny, immensely winning novel about a “sex pioneer” exploring the hinterlands of desire.
A coming-of-age story metamorphoses into a global sexual odyssey.
Kurt Larsen, the ardent young hero of this debut novel, lives in the small Norwegian town of Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle, where privacy for a teenager in the late 1990s remains in short supply. Kurt’s dreams extend far beyond the constraints of his town; he wants to “canvass the entire world for perfect bliss,” he says; “I wanted to investigate the secret thoughts of my peers. I wanted adventure, to be a sex pioneer.” His pioneering is initially limited to placing ads for anonymous hookups with strange men. Through such desperate teenage measures, he meets Jonny Larsen, with whom he’ll have an on-again, off-again relationship throughout the book, as Kurt moves on to college (where he’s the “thin-skinned, over-interpretative, horny type—a roaming satyr”). At university, the scope of his mission suddenly broadens immensely when he begins a fast-paced international flying agenda to qualify for an incredible airline giveaway that will provide him with five free tickets to anywhere in the world. On one of these stopovers, in Oslo, he sees Ragnar, a young man “on top of my list of candidates for sexual perfection,” to whom the entire narrative is addressed. Kurt clearly loses his heart to Ragnar, pleading with him that second chances at their kind of happiness don’t come along often: “Later in life there’d be work, family, and the twenty-four hour job of raising children.” The plaintive, hyperaware tone is typical of Kurt’s narration of his various erotic escapades, which are related by the author in prose that manages to be vivid without becoming either titillating or melodramatic (“Tomorrow I’d meet a dark-haired boy just under my height,” Kurt says of one of his earliest encounters. “And soon after, I’d remove his blue and yellow all-weather jacket and get down to some serious boy fun”). Kurt might at one point profess a desire to be normal and average, but in reality, his far-flung exploits are a rebellion against a young man’s hunger for experience and fear of stagnation. Karlsen conveys the poignancy of it all with extremely knowing skill, raising Kurt’s sordid, picaresque adventures to the level of a life quest.
A frank, funny, immensely winning novel about a “sex pioneer” exploring the hinterlands of desire.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9969272-0-8
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Krutt & Plutt Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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