An engaging, modern-day Faust for brainy rockers.
In Eggenberger’s debut novel, an aging heavy-metal music fan and aspiring writer sells her soul to the devil and finds there’s a lot more to life than good and evil.
The novel’s unnamed, Scandinavian narrator has long enjoyed the freedom of being an unattached, self-described “nympho slut” and “metalhead.” However, she struggles to find time to write between shifts at her day job, and as she approaches her 47th birthday, she begins to worry that her writing career may never take off the way she’d planned and that her steady stream of young one-night stands may soon dry up. One day, as she steals a few hours to write in a Copenhagen coffee shop, a dead ringer for her favorite metal musician approaches her. She recognizes him, not as the rock icon he resembles, but as the devil himself. He offers her the promise of the writing career—and love life—she’s always dreamed of in exchange for her soul, but she’s reluctant. The devil is not accustomed to hearing “no,” and so he instead persuades her to help him destroy his wife, the biblical Lilith, before she destroys the world. As the tough-as-nails narrator’s sultry romance with the devil begins and her writing career skyrockets toward celebrity status, she finds that the real world is a lot more nuanced than the one purported by so-called moralists. The novel has distinct, well-developed feminist undertones and proves to be about much more than a powerful woman destroying another powerful woman. Fans of the long-esteemed feminist heroine Lilith may be disappointed to see her as the villain here, but she proves to be an antagonist of Maleficent-esque proportions, and readers may be torn between fearing and loving her character. Feminist readers may also be pleased to see that the tomboy narrator ultimately finds camaraderie with a well-researched group of legendary women, including the Norse goddess, Freya, and her handmaiden Fulla.
An engaging, modern-day Faust for brainy rockers.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9911059-0-8
Page Count: 610
Publisher: Nigel's Flight
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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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