A debut reminiscent of modern art—often unsettling, not always easy or beautiful, but rewarding to the reader willing to...
A singular novel told largely through interviews between an introspective journalist and the leaders of a New Age therapy said to transfigure its subjects’ personalities.
In his debut novel, Simonini constructs a parallel culture just a few degrees shy of the present. The center of this culture is the “personality movement,” in which celebrity therapists who resemble Oprah with a side of psychodrama work to manipulate their patients’ "p," which, the unnamed journalist says, "as best as I could understand, was some kind of energy substance at the root of our identities.” Through their televised sessions, the therapists work to “turn” patients away from negative behavior patterns with a series of bizarre mental and physical exercises, ideally resulting in the patient gaining a new interpersonal identity. When the reporter agrees to interview the de facto leader of the movement, a woman known only as Mayah, he begins a 20-year correspondence that becomes the major focus of his career, providing an insider’s look at a widespread cultural movement that brings into question the nature of celebrity and its intersections with personal wellness. The narrative is primarily composed of interviews between the journalist and Mayah’s adopted son, Masha, who soon becomes the face of the empire. Though the interviews occasionally spiral into an invented jargon that is more confusing than illuminating, they are consistently hypnotizing as they build a portrait of an individual and his life’s work of manipulating patients' bodies and minds to reconstruct their personalities. As the treatments Masha prescribes grow more physically demanding and accusations arise regarding sexual abuse, the public begins to question the ethics behind his practice, and the narrator struggles to remain objective as the roles of interviewer and subject blur.
A debut reminiscent of modern art—often unsettling, not always easy or beautiful, but rewarding to the reader willing to grapple with its questions.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61219-668-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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