Butler (The Empire of Night, 2014, etc.) risks taking on too many weighty themes for one novel: the shadow of Vietnam, the...
Two brothers, ages 68 and 70, revisit their lives as their father lies dying.
The book’s events cover one week, during which World War II veteran William Quinlan dies and his two sons, Robert and Jimmy, meet for the first time in decades. The sons’ lives have gone in wildly different directions: Jimmy broke ties with his family and went to Canada in the 1960s, choosing a bohemian life as a leather crafter and an open marriage. Robert went to Vietnam in an attempt to win his father’s approval. Now a college professor, he remains haunted by memories of the one soldier he killed and the Vietnamese girlfriend he never saw again; his marriage has gone emotionally stagnant. Both marriages reach crisis points in the week of William’s death, and both sons begin to resolve emotional issues left hanging since the Vietnam years. Meanwhile, Robert is headed toward a potentially violent confrontation he doesn’t see coming thanks to a chance encounter with an unhinged homeless man who has war-related scars of his own. Though this subplot adds suspense, the book’s resonance comes from the two sons’ struggles to make peace with their histories. The climactic scene, Robert’s conversation with his father on his deathbed, is devastating and beautifully written.
Butler (The Empire of Night, 2014, etc.) risks taking on too many weighty themes for one novel: the shadow of Vietnam, the push and pull of father-son relationships, the pitfalls of long-term marriages, and the psychic toll of aging. But with some compelling characters, Butler pulls it all together into a story that’s both complex and meaningful.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-802-12575-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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