Sci-fi as it should be: engaging, moving, and grand in scope.
McCarter (Of Things Not Seen, 2017, etc.) returns with a tale of a man who defeats the limits of mortality only to question the worth of indefinite existence.
Paul Cruz once lived as a human being on 22nd-century Earth. At the time, the planet was recovering from elevated sea levels, displaced populations, and the resulting disease and wars that came with them, collectively known as the Shift. He was married to a woman named Viola, who took increasing comfort, as they grew older, in religion and its promised afterlife. Paul, however, wanted to become a “Singular” and upload his human consciousness to a technological platform called the Singularity. He did so at age 90, after learning of Viola’s death; they’d divorced some years before. After living in virtual worlds of varying quality and design for decades, Paul is now ready to settle at a place called “Home.” It’s a quaint virtual-seaside environment that feels real, even giving him the illusion of a sunburn. There, he meets a person named Simon, who has eyes that seem familiar. Paul recounts the story of how he and other Singulars once wrested their fates from the corrupt Osiris Corporation, which had been deleting people after invoking “obscure clauses in their contracts.” Paul’s history as a Singular is also entwined with the story of Hugh Rice, an architect of the Singularity who became his lover. In this quiet but far-reaching thriller, author McCarter explores the essence of what it means to be human. On worlds where one might become an animal, or even the wind, he shows how virtual existence could become “tiresome”: “If everything was THE BEST, then nothing was,” Paul narrates. McCarter doesn’t bog down the narrative with hard-science jargon, instead cleanly and clearly explaining how the upload process works: “they stop your biological functions, they take your brain apart a cell at a time, mapping each and every neuron.” The first half of the story is rather sinister, with Paul’s fellow Singulars June Grunwald and Kendall Rothschild vanishing, but concerns of the heart quickly take center stage as Paul discovers that “Love shouldn’t be contained or constrained by the accident of gender.” The ending, which brings the discussion of the afterlife full circle, hints at a sequel.
Sci-fi as it should be: engaging, moving, and grand in scope.Pub Date: April 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941153-01-7
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Little Hummingbird Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.
A supposedly recovering alcoholic real estate agent tells her not-exactly-trustworthy version of life in her small New England town in this tragicomic novel by Leary (Outtakes from a Marriage, 2008, etc.).
Sixty-year-old Hildy Good, a divorced realtor who has lived all her life in Wendover on the Massachusetts North Shore, proudly points to having an ancestor burned at the stake at the Salem witch trials. In fact, her party trick is to do psychic readings using subtle suggestions and observational skills honed by selling homes. At first, the novel seems to center on Hildy’s insights about her Wendover neighbors, particularly her recent client Rebecca McAllister, a high-strung young woman who has moved into a local mansion with her businessman husband and two adopted sons. Hildy witnesses Rebecca having trouble fitting in with other mothers, visiting the local psychiatrist Peter Newbold, who rents an office above Hildy’s, and winning a local horse show on her expensive new mount. Hildy is acerbically funny and insightful about her neighbors; many, like her, are from old families whose wealth has evaporated. She becomes Rebecca’s confidante about the affair Rebecca is having with Peter, whom Hildy helped baby-sit when he was a lonely child. She helps another family who needs to sell their house to afford schooling for their special needs child. She begins an affair with local handyman Frankie Getchell, with whom she had a torrid romance as a teenager. But Hildy, who has recently spent a stint in rehab and joined AA after an intervention by her grown daughters, is not quite the jolly eccentric she appears. There are those glasses of wine she drinks alone at night, those morning headaches and memory lapses that are increasing in frequency. As both Rebecca’s and Hildy’s lives spin out of control, the tone darkens until it approaches tragedy. Throughout, Hildy is original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy.
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-01554-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK TO SCREEN
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.
