by Seth Colter Walls ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 2015
Unusual and flawed yet packed with the kind of imaginative brio that fans of political satire will find irresistibly zany.
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America under new (and questionable) leadership provides a creative backdrop for this energetic, offbeat political satire, journalist Walls’ (Incesticidal Nurturing: The Life-Affirming Brilliance of Nirvana’s Weirdest Album, 2013) fiction debut.
It’s 2015, and the United States has been under the republican leadership of Mitt Romney ever since he edged out Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. In an effort to shine bright for his re-election bid, President Romney has been busy instituting a Middle East peace plan as an addendum to the general cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in 2014. Romney’s deal included the creation of Palestinian refugee internment camps located in Gaza, Wyoming, such as Camp Echo in “New Gaza,” staffed largely by imprisoned volunteers (“citizen debtors”) who will have their student loans expunged in exchange for work. Persia VanSlyke is headed to Camp Echo to interview a young English instructor, a task that falls somewhat outside hir typical duties as lead investigator for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Persia—who identifies as a frustrated, ambiguous “genderqueer” and is described in gender-neutral pronouns—is then dispatched by hir boss, Beverly, to dig into a politically risky family scandal involving a prominent venture capitalist who happens to be a Democratic senatorial candidate. In an effort to curb the country’s Republican influence, Beverly, a widower and loyal Democratic Party politico, has been finding such candidates to score senatorial seats, though this blossoming family scandal might put his mission at risk. Walls then effectively amps up the histrionics by adding more outlandish personalities to the mix. Philomela “Melly” Shroud—a fallen journalist jailed for prematurely publicizing Romney’s prison camp project—bombs the prison and absconds with the possibly illegitimate Palestinian son of senatorial candidate Dennett Meyerbeer, with bubbly cable news anchorwoman Crissy hotly pursuing the story. The melodrama may be too-tidily cinched with a garage shootout in the book’s final pages, but on a grander scale, Walls’ wildly serpentine satire ultimately emerges as more than a cleverly penned political lampooning. Along the way, he pauses to reflect on gender nonconformity as well as the greater issues of party politics, privilege, and international relations.
Unusual and flawed yet packed with the kind of imaginative brio that fans of political satire will find irresistibly zany.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-48474-6
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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