A lively and engrossing collection of female-driven fiction.
Berman (Red Caps: New Fairy Tales for Out of the Ordinary Readers, 2014, etc.) edits an anthology of sci-fi and horror from queer perspectives.
In this new anthology from Lethe Press, a cavalcade of emerging writers from the realms of horror and science fiction riffs on the concept of female (mad) scientists. The convention has a heritage: as Connie Wilkins points out in the introduction, if these women are the daughters of Frankenstein, then they are the granddaughters of Mary Shelley and great-granddaughters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Jess Nevins offer further contextualizing with the essay “From Alexander Pope to Splice: A Short History of the Female Mad Scientist,” laying out the history and evolution of the trope. Then come the stories themselves: in “The Moorhead Maze Experiment,” an ambitious psychologist attempts to outdo the Stanford Prison Experiment in terms of innovative sadism; in “Love in the Time of Markov Processes,” a lab assistant falls in love with a scientist against the backdrop of a finite universe; in “Meddling Kids,” an oddly familiar mystery-solving team with a Great Dane in tow foil a professor’s sinister plans. The tones of the pieces vary from campy to earnest to unsettling to literary, though in each case the author works to shift the ground beneath the reader and recast his or her assumptions. Standouts include a Lovecraft-evoking but ultimately intimate submission from Claire Humphrey (“This is Salem at its oldest and spookiest: cold fog off the ocean, daylight dimming early, gables and gambrels looming at odd angles”) and a wonderfully original piece by Romie Stott about a girl trapped by her father in a Fabergé egg during the Bolshevik Revolution. A few fall flat, but they are in the minority, and the freshness of the voices outweighs the occasional lack of polish. The result is a rare combination of subverted gender norms and nostalgic pulp: sometimes provocative and generally fun. While the anthology’s theme may sound niche, the reading experience argues the opposite. Short fiction fans of all stripes will find much to compel them (and to scare, excite, arouse, and amuse them, as well).
A lively and engrossing collection of female-driven fiction.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59021-360-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
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.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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