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PLASTIC JESUS

Missing: Brite’s lyricism and soaring fantasy (as when R. Crumb physically enters Parker’s music in Birdland), the very...

In earlier fiction, Brite used the music of Charlie Parker, the life and art of R. Crumb (the brilliant Drawing Blood, 1993), the necrophilia of Jeffrey Dahmer, and the anchovy shape and wormwood flavor of H. P. Lovecraft as entrance points into her own sparkling fantasy life in print. This time, it’s John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The fact remains that Brite’s most original novel is still her first, Lost Souls (1992), a wildly eloquent, Deep South blues and rock ’n’ roll variation on vampirism among white-trash musicians, a work seemingly not based on famous originals, though we could be wrong. Plastic Jesus, a novella also illustrated by the author, turns Lennon and McCartney into Seth Grealy and Peyton Masters, who begin as straights with girls crawling all over them but later become lovers and even are married by a rogue priest in one of Amsterdam’s newly legalized cannabis coffee shops. The career of the two, beginning with teenage years in Leyborough (read Liverpool), follows quite closely that of the Beatles, although Ringo and George (as Dennis and Mark) are barely minor characters. The first turning point comes when the musicians’ manager, Harold (read Brian), more or less seduces Seth and is later murdered by some rough trade. Seth goes into a deep slump from which only Peyton’s love can rescue him, a love, however, that also gives Peyton control of the band. The lovers go public at Stonewall Inn after the gay riots in Greenwich Village. Seth is assassinated, and afterward Peyton goes to Seth’s shrink, Jonathan Pumphrey, and tells him their life-story. The story’s thin suspense comes when Peyton focuses on killing the assassin.

Missing: Brite’s lyricism and soaring fantasy (as when R. Crumb physically enters Parker’s music in Birdland), the very qualities germane to psychedelics, the Beatles, and the Peter Max years. Here, the originals overpower Brite’s march of whimsy.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2000

ISBN: 1-892284-73-1

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Subterranean Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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HOME FRONT

Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...

 The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.

The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart. 

Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9

Page Count: 400

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

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