by Sean McCloy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2014
An exciting debut that will provide hours of entertainment for both aspiring film buffs and cinematic masters.
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A rare slasher film takes over a video store manager’s life in this cinematic suspense novel.
McCloy’s debut introduces Hal Underwood, a lonely, movie-obsessed, underachieving manager of an aging video emporium, and tracks his descent into unhinged madness after he finds a copy of a horror film called The Jack-o-Lantern Man. He recovers the videotape at a mysterious store called Leandro’s, a veritable cave of wonders for the true movie buff. In the grip of anomie and still hurting from a breakup, Hal decides to pop in the tape for entertainment. The 1970s horror flick tells its story through the eyes of a killer who wears a carved jack-o’-lantern on his head and leaves bloody handprints as a calling card. The film, much like this novel, brims with esoteric allusions to film history, which leads Hal down a rabbit hole in search of answers. He stumbles across a fan website devoted to the movie’s all-but-forgotten director—one Giacomo Nero, whose creepy biography and on-set journals McCloy reproduces in the text. More unsettling, though, is a series of dreams that overtake Hal’s life, in which he acts out scenes from the film, has liaisons with a gorgeous customer who loves the films of French director Éric Rohmer, and encounters weird archetypal figures, such as the “Divine Projectionist.” The novel’s constant cinematic references probably won’t appeal to readers who don’t already have an abiding love of film. Even some movie buffs may feel that some references are mere name-dropping (“Thanks for the pep talk, Malcolm. You been watching Glengarry Glen Ross again?”). However, McCloy’s literary technique sets this work apart, as it includes overlapping texts, fragments, intra-textual screenplays, and diary entries. He uses these inner texts to develop suspense, suspend readers’ disbelief, and show characters from many angles. Overall, it leaves readers with a strong sense of story while simultaneously communicating a sense of authorial playfulness. This is Pynchonian Cronenberg, or Lynchian Hornby—fun and horrific, and campy but engaging.
An exciting debut that will provide hours of entertainment for both aspiring film buffs and cinematic masters.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1482508406
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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