TICKNOR

Name: TICKNOR
Author: Sheila Heti
ISBN: 0-374-27754-0

by Sheila Heti ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2006

With this austere one-note monologue, Heti offers a plate of sour grapes. Ultimately, her work is not daring or terribly...

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A difficult novella that’s a riff on literature’s outsiders and insiders; it’s the second experimental work from this young Canadian author, following her collection The Middle Stories (2001, not reviewed).

“There were no books when I was a boy . . . other boys had books . . . no, the whole country lacked books.” So goes the opening as the narrator, Ticknor, revises and contradicts himself, sorting through his memories of early-19th-century New England. Slowly, a contrast emerges. There is privation (Ticknor’s experience) and there is plenty, enjoyed by his childhood friend Prescott. (The latter was a respected American historian; Ticknor, a Harvard professor, was his biographer.) As they mature, the contrast sharpens. The world of 19th-century Boston is Prescott’s oyster. His work receives “a great roar from the national press,” while Ticknor has been working ten years on one article, and cannot even get Prescott’s opinion of it. Prescott bests him with women, too. He is happily married to the ample Claire; Ticknor, a bachelor, lusts after her, to Claire’s disgust. Yet they stay in touch, inviting Ticknor to supper; the fussbudget endlessly deliberates his preparations for the occasion. Prescott’s life is not all peaches and cream. As a schoolboy, he had received a bread roll smack in the eye and suffered recurring vision problems. Did Ticknor inadvertently launch the offending roll, and then refuse to apologize? And does it really matter? Heti’s work is kin to Nabokov’s Pale Fire in its portrayal of a problematic relationship between two writers, strung with tripwires, fueled by obsession. Ticknor will outlive Prescott, and he will mourn “the extinguishing of a flame that had burned so brightly”; we are left guessing whether that is a sincere tribute or bitter irony.

With this austere one-note monologue, Heti offers a plate of sour grapes. Ultimately, her work is not daring or terribly experimental.

Pub Date: April 4, 2006

ISBN: 0-374-27754-0

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALPHABETICAL DIARIES
by Sheila Heti

- BOOK REVIEW
PURE COLOUR
by Sheila Heti

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2018
edited by Sheila Heti

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TELL ME LIES

by Carola Lovering ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 12, 2018

There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.

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Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."

Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.

There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.

Pub Date: June 12, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
CAN'T LOOK AWAY
by Carola Lovering

- BOOK REVIEW
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
by Carola Lovering

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.