The wry humor and raw emotional truth of JJ’s journey will have readers rooting for him from death to eternity.
When 29-year-old janitor JJ Lynch is tragically killed by a drunk driver, he uses tools found in a university lab to communicate with those he’s left behind.
McCarter has turned the grief memoir on its head by exploring loss from the first-person point of view of his newly departed protagonist, struggling to shuffle off this mortal coil. In life, JJ befriended Tamara, a scientist experimenting with electromagnetism in an effort to reach her murdered fiancé; after his own untimely passing, JJ uses Tamara’s experiment to send her a series of “Transmissions” from the other side. This storytelling device is original, and JJ’s transmissions are well written and often irreverent. In between, though, McCarter includes sketchily written “Interview Transcripts,” in which JJ’s loved ones react to his messages from beyond. Here, the author misses the opportunity to flesh out the experience of those left behind, more deeply linking the novel’s frame—the laboratory experiment—with JJ’s “memoir.” There are other missed opportunities, as well. Tamara’s fiancé died trying to tell her something, but this intriguing thread is left unresolved, as is another memorable episode in which new spirit JJ is threatened by a gang of ghostly bullies. McCarter has grounded his paranormal narrative in the “reality” of numerous accounts of near-death experiences, such as the “silver cord” connecting the soul to the “meat,” or body, but there is much for the rookie ghost to learn on the fly. While coming to terms with his accident, JJ is consumed by flames of rage as he seeks retribution for his death, sinks into a vivid, horrifying slough of despond known as the bardo (a Buddhist concept) and fights desperately to intervene as his best friend is about to be murdered. McCarter’s spirit world can also be playful and fun, particularly his account of the “Midnight Circle,” at which a motley assortment of ghosts gather to perform Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. It is to the author’s credit that, even though his main character is “extra corporeal,” JJ’s heartrending passage, kicking and screaming, through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief for his lost life, is relatable for any reader who has lost a loved one too soon.
The wry humor and raw emotional truth of JJ’s journey will have readers rooting for him from death to eternity.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0964209626
Page Count: 283
Publisher: Little Hummingbird
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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