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NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH

THE YEAR’S BEST, 2004

Well-crafted tales from a laudable tradition, though Ravenal might encourage more experimental voices next time.

A mixed bag of 18 mostly unsurprising stories by names both celebrated and more regionally obscure in the 19th installment of this well-established series.

As usual, series editor Ravenel aims for a broad readership with stories ranging from the generic writing-program sort (Michael Knight’s blithely paced account of a divorced father’s kidnapping of his young daughter, “Feeling Lucky”; Bret Anthony Johnston’s lachrymose and rather derivative “The Widow”) to more truly weird tales informed by innate southern proclivities for dogs, church signs, and General Lee (in, respectively, Ann Pancake’s “Dog Song,” Drew Perry’s delightful “Love is Gnats Today,” and R.T. Smith’s forlorn visit to the Lee Chapel in “Docent”). What makes this collection specifically southern? Tim Gautreaux in his preface suggests love for their region and for storytelling as salient traits. “A Rich Man,” which first appeared in The New Yorker (the others were published in literary magazines across the country), meets these criteria: The language is colloquial and stylistically unforced, the characters quirky and richly depicted, as Edward P. Jones shows his elderly protagonist taking up a life as a swinger and drug dealer following his wife’s death after 50 years of marriage mostly living in the same apartment house in Washington, DC. But not every story fits the mold; two that stand out in a most welcome fashion from the conventional selections are Brock Clarke’s edgy “The Lolita School,” delineating the curriculum of a “alternative country day school of some sort” in South Carolina that will mold young girls into Nabokov’s seductive heroine, and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan’s “Saturday Afternoon in the Holocaust Museum,” which follows an estranged couple's trek through a Richmond afternoon. Each author was asked to offer commentary on his or her story, which many find an unfortunate invasion of their fictional space: “I have trouble remembering whether much in my life was fact or imagined,” notes “Pagan” author Rick Bass in discomfort).

Well-crafted tales from a laudable tradition, though Ravenal might encourage more experimental voices next time.

Pub Date: June 4, 2004

ISBN: 1-56512-432-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004

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CONCLAVE

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

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THE SECRET HISTORY

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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