An uneven novel about a troubled woman.
In Mosier’s debut novel, a young man and woman find unlikely love in New York City.
Tuli (“short for Tulip”) is a young Manhattan woman who works at a call center. She also, as the novel’s opening line states, gives “handjobs to strangers, but not for the usual reasons.” Unhappy, isolated and hopping from therapist to therapist, Tuli is drawn to handicapped or otherwise unusual men—but neither she nor they derive much pleasure from the relationships. Things begin to change, however, when Sam—a young disabled man working at his first job as a magazine intern—moves to her neighborhood. He meets Tuli at her regular coffee shop, and the two quickly hit it off. But it will take a lot more than some initial chemistry to break down Tuli’s emotional barriers, or to convince Sam that a relationship might be possible. Tuli must also deal with an exploitative man who’s pretending to be a therapist, frequent humiliation at work, and her pet fish, who narrates the story. Overall, it’s a recipe for a sometimes-sordid, sometimes-sentimental novel. Mosier has a pleasingly offbeat prose style, and his characters, from Sam and Tuli to the barista at their coffee shop hangout, are genuinely likable. The two leads’ early scenes together are particularly compelling. Unfortunately, the book is handicapped by a few crucial faults: The omniscient fish’s presence is baffling, particularly as he lusts after Tuli like the human men in her life do. (Must women be objectified even by the animals in their lives?) Many of the Manhattan-set details ring false; for example, Tuli at one point winds up on a farm while on a bender, and Sam is offered a free room to work as an intern at a poetry magazine. Also, Tuli’s job at a call center seems implausible after it’s revealed that she’s an heiress. Realism may not be Mosier’s goal, but the combination of these details may make it difficult for readers to truly empathize with the characters and fully engage with the narrative.
An uneven novel about a troubled woman.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1505284317
Page Count: 220
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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