Kluge’s sharp writing and vivid descriptions elevate what could have been yet another novel about a frustrated writer’s...
An unfinished novel haunts a college writing teacher’s life.
Perhaps drawing upon his experience as a writer in residence at Kenyon College in Ohio, Kluge (Final Exam, 2005, etc.) offers a fictional, expansive and discursive take on a teacher’s writing life at a small, unnamed college in Ohio. As he nears the end of a 35-year career as a creative-writing teacher, George Canaris is killed in a hit-and-run one spring morning as he takes his daily constitutional. In its laudatory obituary, the New York Times hails two novels Canaris wrote early in his career, but concludes the reasons behind the fallow literary career that followed remain a mystery. For decades Canaris had promised a novel that never materialized. The work—with the not-too-subtle title The Beast—became his albatross and ultimately led the college to encourage Canaris to step aside to make room for the latest hot, young author. Going through the teacher’s home, his literary executor finds a manuscript in the refrigerator. The work, alas, is not The Beast, but a memoir entitled Gone Tomorrow. The journal follows two tracks, an account of his final days as a teacher and a chronological journal of his life. Kluge’s vision is panoramic. He moves from Prague, where Canaris was born, to California, where he wrote a novel about Hollywood; then to Ohio; briefly to Manhattan; then, near the end, back to Prague, where the idea for The Beast first took hold. A full slate of sharply sketched characters fill out the canvas—a film star with whom Canaris has an affair; colleagues and administrators collegial and nasty; and writing students frustrating and rewarding. Through all this The Beast hovers, in the same way that “Rosebud” haunts Charles Foster Kane. If the novel even exists, what does it tell about its author?
Kluge’s sharp writing and vivid descriptions elevate what could have been yet another novel about a frustrated writer’s second act.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59020-090-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
Clear directions, but don’t try the rope trick at home.
A gay cop is found hanged. Was it suicide, murder, or kinky sex gone wrong? Street-smart Minneapolis police detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska, back on the beat after Ashes to Ashes (1999), learn a lot about autoerotic asphyxiation while trying to crack the case.
Sam and Nikki remain tough but likable protagonists as they investigate a long list of possible suspects: the victim’s alcoholic father, a partially paralyzed cop; a jealous older brother with a taste for violence; a mysterious blond socialite of amazing strength; a hero cop turned crime-show host; and so on. But the detectives also view a home video unwittingly left to posterity by a hapless devotee of self-stimulation through suffocation that suggests the possibility of accidental death. (The author points out, somewhat in the style of a public-service announcement, that many teenage suicides by hanging may well be experimentation of this kind gone tragically wrong.) Unlike the sadistic sexual practices on display in Ashes to Ashes, this particular perversion is more pathetic than titillating, although Hoag tries hard to crank up the suspense. Energetic, down-to-earth prose and realistically gritty dialogue help push the workmanlike plot to its complex conclusion, but a notepad and pencil may come in handy to remember who shot whom, when, and why. Unfortunately, the author has chosen to write about a milieu with which she is clearly unfamiliar: urban gay life (here, exclusively male). Not wanting to offend or get too far into the seamier side of gay culture, Hoag settles for bland political correctness and a balanced ratio of 50 percent good gay guys to 50 percent bad gay guys. In dramatic terms, they cancel each other out, and none of them is particularly believable. For all the double-crosses, dire threats, and crashing around with guns, the story just isn’t thrilling or chilling. But it does move—and fast.
Clear directions, but don’t try the rope trick at home.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-553-10634-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of...
Coben (The Stranger, 2015, etc.) hits the bull’s eye again with this taut tale of a disgraced combat veteran whose homefront life is turned upside down by an image captured by her nanny cam.
Recent widows can’t be too careful, and the day she buries the husband who was shot by a pair of muggers in Central Park, Maya Burkett installs a concealed camera in her home to keep an eye on Lily, her 2-year-old daughter, and her nanny, Isabella Mendez , while she’s out at her job as a flight instructor. She’s shocked beyond belief when she checks the footage and sees images of her murdered husband returned from the grave to her den. Confronted with the video, Isabella claims she doesn’t see anything that looks like Joe Burkett, then blasts Maya with pepper spray and takes off with the memory card. Should Maya go to the police? They were no help when her sister, Claire, was killed in a home invasion while she was deployed in the Middle East, and she doesn’t trust Roger Kierce, the NYPD homicide detective heading the investigation of Joe’s murder. Besides, Maya’s already juggling a heavy load of baggage. Whistle-blower Corey Rudzinski ended her military career when he posted footage of her ordering a defensive airstrike that killed five civilians, and she’s just waiting for him to release the audio feed that would damage her reputation even more. So after Kierce drops a bombshell—the same gun was used to shoot both Joe and Claire—Maya launches her own investigation, little knowing that it will link both murders to the death more than 10 years ago of Joe’s brother Andrew and the secrets the wealthy and powerful Burkett family has been hiding ever since.
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of fireworks and the ability to root all the revelations in deeply felt emotions—in a tale guaranteed to fool even the craftiest readers a lot more than once.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95509-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
