An entertaining story of assassins, aliens and race cars.
Stich’s latest novel (The Rise of the New Queen, 2006) is a darkly comic thriller about a man who stumbles upon a secret society involved in murder, corporate gambling—and drag races.
Edward Bloodgood’s first day at Dallas-based Corpotex goes off without a hitch, until he gets a ride from a beautiful woman named Deidra and ends the night by helping to kill a corrupt cop while riding shotgun in a drag-racing pink hearse. The races are popular among his fellow wagering business execs, and the next day, racer Edward moves from a cubicle to an office upstairs. The money’s good, but it doesn’t last long; soon, he and Deidra suspect that various companies are involved in assassinations—and that they may be asked to carry them out. As the strange story progresses, readers may find it increasingly difficult to label it with a particular genre, as it displays aspects of a thriller, a comedy, an espionage story and even a sci-fi novel (starting when Deidra candidly tells Edward that a bartender is an alien). Edward sometimes comes across as a dullard, as he’s slower to comprehend things than most readers will be; “I don’t understand” at times seems to be his catchphrase. However, his habitual stammering plays well against the tough, headstrong Deidra, who makes Edward look better by simply taking a liking to him. The couple’s relationship develops convincingly, as both willingly face treacherous circumstances on the other’s behalf. The energetic story is packed with amusing imagery: businessmen texting during a presentation at a table “covered in sugary flakes and colorful sprinkles like confetti”; a professor visited by obnoxious aliens having way too much fun; and an endless barrage of madcap characters, including Johnny Feinstein, Deidra’s skinny, bucktoothed, green-pompadour–sporting racing adversary. Readers may be surprised by how much of the plot is left unresolved, but most relevant questions are answered, including the secret society’s origins. As it’s the first in a proposed series, further elucidations are sure to come.
An entertaining story of assassins, aliens and race cars.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615814407
Page Count: 256
Publisher: V.C. Stich Book Series
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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