From King (The Book of Reuben, 1994, etc), a departure from her familiar fictional environs (the small town of Nodd's Ridge), but a work sharing with her earlier books a decidedly unquaint view of domestic life in Maine. Kristin Mellors (a.k.a. ``Kissy Melons,'' for an obvious physical attribute) starts out the novel by almost killing two fellow students at Sowerwine College. Her car doesn't hit them, but soon after a vehicle driven by a drunk premed student does. One girl dies, the other falls into a coma. Kissy's relationship with the girl in a coma, Ruth Prashker, will haunt her for the rest of the story, as will her involvement with the drunk driver. An aspiring photographer, Kissy is a member of the college's black-clad artsy set, so it's a surprise when she takes up with the star of the school hockey team, Junior Clootie. But if sex is any indication (and it is the principal indication of practically everything here), the two are made for each other. Clootie is bound for the pros, but Kissy's future is less clear. Will she establish her independence from her past, or will the survivors of the accident she witnessed continue to dog her existence? Clootie truly loves her, but he's basically an amiable screw-up. Some ill-advised whoring lands both him and Kissy with the clap and sets a pattern: Clootie will always be trouble, and Kissy will always have trouble staying away. A bizarre tryst with the drunk driver/premed student leaves Kissy pregnant, and she marries Clootie, giving birth to a baby girl. Their marriage goes almost immediately to pieces, though, thanks largely to Clootie's indiscretions and nomadic lifestyle. The author's decision to tack on a conventional thriller ending is questionable, but it scarcely dilutes the impact of this rough-and-tumble, exceedingly realistic, and metaphorically resonant lurch through damaged lives. A novel of great insight and empathy, filled with believable, troubled, complex characters. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94241-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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