An exciting debut that will provide hours of entertainment for both aspiring film buffs and cinematic masters.
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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