As Ford (A Piece of My Heart) goes about setting up his initial scene—a rootless, alienated American in Oaxaca, Mexico, picks up an equally rootless girl and takes her to a boxing match where one of the fighters promptly has one of his eyeballs punched out—you begin to get a sinking feeling. When you learn that the American, Harry Quinn, is in Oaxaca in order to arrange for his lover's brother (a drug-dealer) to be sprung from a local prison, you sink a little lower—then lower still when you're introduced to Rae herself, Quinn's disaffected, zombie-oid lover. And things hit just about rock-bottom when these flat, clichÉd characters begin to be surrounded by Ford's dreadful macho/psychological prose, a syrup boiled down from the worst tendencies of everyone from Hemingway to Robert Stone: "Mexico was like Vietnam or L.A., only more disappointing—a great trivial abundance of crap the chief effect of which wasn't variety but sameness. And since you couldn't remember the particulars from one day to the next, you couldn't avoid and control. And the only consolation finally was that you didn't have any stake in it, and Quinn didn't figure to be around long enough to earn one." Or: "Bernhardt's absence made him feel marooned, close to the lean, satisfied edge of all losses, the point where time froze on whatever was present, and nothing could be longed for or feared and protected against, and luck seemed like not the thing you played. It was the best luck there was." Very quickly, then, the combination of this pretentious/empty verbiage with the existential-thriller formula becomes a numbing one, and the plot itself, involving drug-traffickers, offers no surprises: thanks to a double-cross, Quinn and Rae never do get Rae's brother out of jail, and some shoot-ups ensue. True, A Piece of My Heart (though somewhat weighed down with similarly broody, hollow prose) did show a talent for Southern milieu, violent atmosphere, and loner characters. But this second novel fulfills none of that promise, settling instead for dismal posturing and imitative melodrama.
Pub Date: April 23, 1981
ISBN: 0394750896
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1981
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© 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.
