An amusing—if sometimes sluggish—novelization of a time when marbles meant everything.
A love of the game of marbles leads one 6-year-old boy on a yearlong competitive odyssey in this deliberately paced debut novel.
Ollies, cats’ eyes, bumblebees, and steelies: the shapes and colors of marbles enchant young Michael Archer. As much as he loves their colors, Michael is equally enchanted by the cool sportsmanship of the game itself: “The self-reliance, the independence required by the game struck a resounding, reverberating chord.” And he’s good at it. A mere first-grader, Michael’s good enough to best even the fourth-graders. The life of a 6-year-old boy is a treacherous one, and marbles lead to their share of hairsbreadth escapes. Michael goes fishing for old beauties at Axelrod’s junkyard, a plan that leaves him vulnerable to the owner’s intruder-smearing weaponry, balloons “inflated to almost bursting with a concoction of water, permanent fabric dye and a puree of rotten eggs.” Later, Michael causes a ruckus in the school library by spilling his lunchtime winnings across the floor. But things get serious when he’s challenged to a match by Billy Schoutenlauder. Robert, his older brother, warns Michael it could be a dangerous game, and this proves no laughing matter. Sore losers abound. Early on, Rodney Strong chases Michael all the way home, spoiling for a fight. And Michael isn’t the only unwitting victim. Spencer’s voice is rich and absorbing, though his sentences can be wordy. Simple gestures become confusing via overdescription (“I used both of my hands to press and then wipe away the external and internal moisture that had built-up in and around my eyes”). But these boyhood struggles are winsome, and debut author Islo, in his attention to the textures of everyday objects, may remind readers of an early Nicholson Baker.
An amusing—if sometimes sluggish—novelization of a time when marbles meant everything.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5236-3084-4
Page Count: 417
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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