A nest-of-vipers melodrama set in German-occupied France near the end of WWII, from the young author of last year’s debut novel A Parisian from Kansas. The story begins in 1944 in Paris, where “stomach doctor” Emile Bastien, assisted by his beautiful secretary-nurse (and mistress) Simone Givry, maintains a thriving practice during the lean Occupation years by numbering Nazi officers among his patients. Emile is separated from his wife Marie, from whom he has hidden a fortune in gold ingots—presumably somewhere on the family’s country vineyard currently occupied by the embittered Marie. An extended flashback to 1942 explicitly links the Bastiens’ willful daughter Paulette and resentful son Rene to their parents’ past and present machinations—though it interrupts, and somewhat diffuses the main plot, which develops from Emile’s vengeful surgical mistreatment of ulcer patient Heinrich Schrodinger, an SS major who has smilingly threatened, while describing his symptoms, to appropriate the stoical Simone. As Paris is liberated, Tapon pours it on: the melodrama rises to—well, risible levels. Emile is arrested by French authorities for having “aided Nazis.” Simone, desperate to retrieve the “dowry” she knows he’s hidden, contrives to visit Emile in prison by seducing a brainless guard (“She had never felt stronger, had never so dominated a man”). A confrontation during the reading of Emile’s will puts Simone and Marie into collusion against the defiant Paulette; a discovery is made in the Bastien country house’s cellar; and there’s a savage sudden twist at the end. If all this sounds a bit overloaded, be assured that it is: Tapon seems to have intended to marry an ironic study of wartime mentality and morality to a sleek, sexy “Diabolique”-like suspense tale. Tapon can do better but very possibly didn’t want to this time around. The Mistress reads like a screenplay, and the movie version can’t be far behind.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-94461-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Fans weary of King's recent unwieldy tomes can rest easy: his newest is slim, slick, and razor-keen. His first novel without supernatural elements outside of the Richard Bachman series, this psychological terror tale laced with pitch-black humor tells the nerve-jangling story of a best-selling author kidnapped and tortured by his "number one fan." King opens on a disorienting note as writer Paul Sheldon drifts awake to find himself in bed, his legs shattered. A beefy woman, 40-ish Annie Wilkes, appears and feeds him barbiturates. During the hazy next week, Paul learns that Annie, an ex-nurse, carried him from a car wreck to her isolated house, where she plans to keep him indefinitely. She's a spiteful misanthrope subject to catatonic fits, but worships Paul because he writes her favorite books, historical novels featuring the heroine "Misery." As Annie pumps him with drugs and reads the script of his latest novel, also saved from the wreck, Paul waits with growing apprehension—he killed off Misery in this new one. tn time, Annie rushes into the room, howling: she demands that Paul write a new novel resurrecting Misery just for her. He refuses until she threatens to withhold his drugs; so he begins the book (tantalizing chunks of which King seeds throughout this novel). Days later, when Annie goes to town, Paul, who's now in a wheelchair, escapes his locked room and finds a scrapbook with clippings of Annie's hobby: she's a mass-murderer. Up to here, King has gleefully slathered on the tension: now he slams on the shocks as Annie returns swinging an axe and chops off Paul's foot. Soon after, off comes his thumb; when a cop looking for Paul shows up, Annie lawnmowers his head. Burning for revenge, Paul finishes his novel, only to use the manuscript as a weapon against his captor in the ironic, ferocious climax. Although lacking the psychological richness of his best work, this nasty shard of a novel with its weird autobiographical implications probably will thrill and chill King's legion of fans. Note: the publisher plans an unprecedented first printing of one-million copies.
Pub Date: June 8, 1987
ISBN: 0451169522
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987
BOOK TO SCREEN
A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.
Rome, past and present, serves as the setting for a sparkling historical novel.
Smith (Free Men, 2016, etc.) bounds through 2,000 years of history, following four indelible characters as they grapple with questions of faith, freedom, and transgressive love. Tom, a biologist working in contemporary Rome, is studying ostracods, tiny crustaceans that thrive in polluted, agitated environments. “Are they adapting in the face of disadvantage or are they opportunists of collapse?” Tom asks, aware that his question about ostracods could just as well apply to his own emotional agitation. The married father of a 9-year-old daughter, he has met a young woman who enchants him, impelling him to confront his desperate desire for “an unleashing” and for a love deeper than what he feels for his wife. A child playing in the water where he is investigating suddenly shrieks in pain, pierced by a piece of bent metal, “scaly with corrosion, its silver marred with patches of orange rust.” It is a fishhook—maybe a castoff with no value or perhaps an ancient relic: uncanny, miraculous. The fishhook reappears as Smith leaps back to the Renaissance, where it falls into the hands of Giulia, a mixed-race princess newly married to a Medici, pregnant with another man’s child. For Giulia, her fortunes embroiled in political and religious rivalries, the fishhook evokes a holier time, before corruption and hypocrisy sullied the church. In ninth-century Rome, Felix, a 60-year-old monk, is tormented by his youthful, forbidden love for Tomaso; assigned to watch over the decaying bodies in the putridarium, Felix comes into possession of the fishhook, guessing—wishing—that it belonged to the martyred St. Prisca, who perhaps “got it direct from Jesus.” In the year 165, Prisca did indeed find the hook, secreting it as a precious token. Drawn to worshipping Christ rather than pagan gods, 12-year-old Prisca stands defiant against her violent tormenters. Perhaps Smith’s most appealing character is Satan, whose weary, ironic comments punctuate a narrative that shines with lyrical, translucent prose.
A compelling, beautifully rendered tale of passion and pain.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-287364-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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