A lovely and touching exploration of grief and courage, perfect for self-proclaimed geeks and those who love them.
A man spends his evenings dressing up as a superhero and his days stuck in the past.
Sam Holloway is, by outward appearances, a normal man. He flies under the radar in his job at a warehouse, he has a couple of friends, and he spends his free time drinking at a local pub. But what no one else knows is that, by night, Sam becomes The Phantasm. He dons a costume and hits the city streets, ready to help people as a renegade crime fighter. It’s the only thing that helps Sam make sense of the crushing grief and loneliness he feels after the years-ago plane crash that killed his entire family. He may not have been able to save them, but at least he can help others. Sam prefers to be by himself, at home with his comics, sticking to his routines…that is, until he meets Sarah. Right away, Sam knows that Sarah is different—she seems to understand him, and he’d rather be with her than home alone. But actually being in a relationship with her will require Sam to open up in a way that he hasn’t been able to since his family died. He may even have to give up his secret crime-fighting alter ego…but is a new relationship worth it? Or should he just stay in the comfortable, but lonely, cocoon he’s created? When Sam makes a mistake at work that spirals into a catastrophe, he realizes he can’t be anonymous forever. Thomas’ (On the Third Day, 2010, etc.) characters are all well-drawn, especially Sam, whose sympathetic backstory makes him immensely likable. Sam’s life seems almost unbearably sad at points, but that makes it all the more meaningful when he’s finally able to take off his mask—both figuratively and literally—and be brave. By opening himself up to Sarah, his friends, and even his boss, Sam might finally be able to live a life he never thought possible.
A lovely and touching exploration of grief and courage, perfect for self-proclaimed geeks and those who love them.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 9780-7783-0871-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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