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THE FLYING CIRCUS

Name: THE FLYING CIRCUS
Author: Susan Crandall
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7214-1

by Susan Crandall ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2015

An engaging road saga that hits some potholes—or air pockets—along the way.

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Picaresque tour of mid-America in the aftermath of the Great War, bringing together a fugitive, a jaded flier, an escapee former heiress—and a very cute puppy.

Henry Jefferson, nee Schuler, the orphaned son of German immigrants, is on the run after being accused—rightly or wrongly we won’t learn until the end—of murdering a young woman in Indiana. Making for Chicago, Henry runs into Gil, a former Army reconnaissance pilot with a past, and his Jenny biplane. A talented mechanic, Henry offers his services to Gil, who's reluctant to accept until his loner status is further threatened by Cora, who's fleeing her mother’s plans for her, specifically marriage into wealth to restore her ruined family fortune. Mostly at the behest of Cora, a self-taught stunt motorcyclist, the trio forms the Mercury’s Daredevils barnstorming act, named after an adorable stray mutt Cora teaches to do doggy tricks. As they make the circuit around rural Illinois, they encounter criminal elements linked to the illicit booze trade and narrowly escape gangsters, the Klan, and, especially crucial in Henry’s case, the law. When they cross the Mississippi, however, the amateurishness of their act—mostly featuring motorcycle versus airplane races—stands in stark contrast to the magnificence of Hoffmann’s Flying Circus, which features four airplanes in much better condition than Gil’s rattletrap and not just former reconnaissance pilots, but former fighting aces. Cora joins Hoffman’s, followed with reluctance by Henry and Gil after the Jenny is destroyed by a twister. Longueurs ensue as we wait to discover whether Henry really is a criminal, to what extent Gil’s guilt is justified, and whether some vulnerability lurks beneath Cora’s spunkily gorgeous tomboy exterior. The verisimilitude of the language suffers, as too much modern parlance, e.g. “repressed emotions,” “what’s not to like,” etc., jostles against expressions like “the bee’s knees” and “the cat’s pajamas.” The technical challenges of early aviation are described with far more coherence and confidence.

An engaging road saga that hits some potholes—or air pockets—along the way.

Pub Date: July 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4767-7214-1

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: April 28, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE VENTRILOQUISTS

by E.R. Ramzipoor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 27, 2019

A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.

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Based on an actual incident in Nazi-occupied Belgium, Ramzipoor’s debut is a tragicomic account of fake news for a cause.

Structured like a heist movie, the novel follows several members of a conspiracy in Enghien, Belgium, who have a daring plan. The conspirators do not intend to survive this caper, only to bring some humor—and encouragement for resisters—into the grim existence of Belgians under Nazi rule. To this end, the plotters—among them Marc Aubrion, a journalist and comic; David Spiegelman, an expert forger; Lada Tarcovich, a smuggler and sex worker; and Gamin, a girl masquerading as a male street urchin—intend to...publish a newspaper. And only one issue of a newspaper, to be substituted on one night for the regular evening paper, Le Soir, which has become a mouthpiece for Nazi disinformation. Le Faux Soir, as the changeling paper is appropriately dubbed, will feature satire, doctored photographs making fun of Hitler, and wry requests for a long-overdue Allied invasion. (Target press date: Nov. 11, 1943.) To avoid immediate capture, the Faux Soir staff must act as double agents, convincing (or maybe not) the local Nazi commandant, August Wolff, that they are actually putting out an anti-Allies “propaganda bomb.” The challenge of fleshing out and differentiating so many colorful characters, combined with the sheer logistics of acquiring paper, ink, money, facilities, etc. under the Gestapo’s nose, makes for an excruciatingly slow exposé of how this sausage will be made. The banter here, reminiscent of the better Ocean’s Eleven sequels, keeps the mechanism well oiled, but it is still creaky. A few scenes amply illustrate the brutality of the Occupation, and sexual orientation works its way in: Lada is a lesbian and David, in addition to being a Jew, is gay—August Wolff’s closeted desire may be the only reason David has, so far, escaped the camps. The genuine pathos at the end of this overdetermined rainbow may be worth the wait.

A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.

Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-7783-0815-7

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Park Row Books

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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KAFKA ON THE SHORE

by Haruki Murakami & translated by Philip Gabriel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 24, 2005

A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy.

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Two mysterious quests form the core of Murakami’s absorbing seventh novel, whose encyclopedic breadth recalls his earlier successes, A Wild Sheep Chase (1989) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997).

In the first of two parallel narratives, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura drops out of school and leaves the Tokyo home he shares with his artist-sculptor father, to seek the mother and sister who left them when Kafka was four years old. Traveling to the small town of Takamatsu, he spends his days at a free library, reconnects with a resourceful older girl who becomes his de facto mentor, and begins to reenact the details of a mysterious “incident” from more than 60 years ago. In 1944, a group of 16 schoolchildren inexplicably “lost consciousness” during an outing in a rural mountain area. Only one of them, Satoru Nakata, emerged from the incident damaged—and it’s he who, decades later, becomes the story’s second protagonist: a childlike, scarcely articulate, mentally challenged sexagenarian who is supported by a possibly guilty government’s “sub city” and possesses the ability to hold conversations (charmingly funny ones) with cats. With masterly skill and considerable subtlety, Murakami gradually plaits together the experiences and fates of Kafka and Nakata, underscoring their increasingly complex symbolic significance with several dazzling subplots and texts: a paternal prophecy echoing the Oedipus legend (from which Kafka also seeks escape); a faux-biblical occurrence in which things that ought not to be in the skies are raining down from them; the bizarre figures of a whore devoted to Hegel’s philosophy; and an otherworldly pimp whose sartorial affectations cloak his true menacing nature; a ghostly forest into which Russian soldiers inexplicably disappear; and—in glancing allusions to Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki—a clever homage to that author’s beguiling 1905 fantasy, I Am a Cat. Murakami is of course himself an immensely reader-friendly novelist, and never has he offered more enticing fare than this enchantingly inventive tale.

A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy.