A lusty, tragic tale for readers who are willing to work for its satisfying moments of connection.
Coomer’s (Dove Creek, 2010, etc.) second novel tracks the impact of an Australian lothario on two families, one Australian and the other American.
The story begins in the Australian Outback in the 1950s, where Edmonds Tuor and his wife, Cherise Marie, operate a caravan camp. Next door are Russell and Jeanne McMurtrey, Americans who’ve brought their two children to caravan through Australia on an educational journey. With the McCurtreys is a local hire, Rich Hand, a “road assistant and tour guide.” Rich has “Hair black like an oyster” and “Cobalt eyes,” which is evidently an irresistible combination, as both Cherise and Jeanne are separately swept away by his animal magnetism. The affairs result in both women getting pregnant. The McMurtreys return home to San Diego, where their new son, Dale, is born, and Cherise gives birth to Martin, her third child, in Australia. Martin eventually moves to America, and the second half of the novel follows him to Idaho, where he’s an on-again, off-again mental health patient. Much like his older brother, Piotr, who has “night terrors,” Martin suffers from “seizures” and hallucinations, which are depicted in harrowing detail. Coomer has woven an intriguing, complicated tale filled with so many characters that readers will need a score card to keep them all straight. Almost everyone has ties to everyone else in one way or another, in locations from Australia to America and through the decades of the second half of the 20th century. A few more signposts would have been useful; instead, readers will have to ferret out the revolving time frames from scant clues. Although the narrative is heavily character-driven, it’s also defined by its attention to local vernacular, its vivid imagery of the unforgivingly arid Outback, and its focus on the challenges faced by a unique assortment of people who have chosen to call it home. Overall, it’s a frustrating yet engrossing read that leaves readers pondering where the story might go next.
A lusty, tragic tale for readers who are willing to work for its satisfying moments of connection.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-945419-02-7
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Fawkes Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King's newest is a gargantuan summer sausage, at 1144 pages his largest yet, and is made of the same spiceless grindings as ever: banal characters spewing sawdust dialogue as they blunder about his dark butcher shop. The horror this time out is from beyond the universe, a kind of impossible-to-define malevolence that has holed up in the sewers under the New England town of Derry. The It sustains itself by feeding on fear-charged human meat—mainly children. To achieve the maximum saturation of adrenalin in its victims, It presents itself sometimes as an adorable, balloon-bearing clown which then turns into the most horrible personal vision that the victims can fear. The novel's most lovingly drawn settings are the endless, lightless, muck-filled sewage tunnels into which it draws its victims. Can an entire city—like Derry—be haunted? King asks. Say, by some supergigantic, extragalactic, pregnant spider that now lives in the sewers under the waterworks and sends its evil mind up through the bathtub drain, or any drain, for its victims? In 1741, everyone in Derry township just disappeared—no bones, no bodies—and every 27 years since then something catastrophic has happened in Derry. In 1930, 170 children disappeared. The Horror behind the horrors, though, was first discovered some 27 years ago (in 1958, when Derry was in the grip of a murder spree) by a band of seven fear-ridden children known as the Losers, who entered the drains in search of It. And It they found, behind a tiny door like the one into Alice's garden. But what they found was so horrible that they soon began forgetting it. Now, in 1985, these children are a horror novelist, an accountant, a disc jockey, an architect, a dress designer, the owner of a Manhattan limousine service, and the unofficial Derry town historian. During their reunion, the Losers again face the cyclical rebirth of the town's haunting, which again launches them into the drains. This time they meet It's many projections (as an enormous, tentacled, throbbing eyeball, as a kind of pterodactyl, etc.) before going through the small door one last time to meet. . .Mama Spider! The King of the Pulps smiles and shuffles as he punches out his vulgarian allegory, but he too often sounds bored, as if whipping himself on with his favorite Kirin beer for zip.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0451169514
Page Count: 1110
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1986
BOOK TO SCREEN
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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