An inventive, reflective story about cultural phenomena and personal connections to literature.
A professor applies to become part of a popular writer’s outlandish literary stunt in this novel.
Literature professor Christopher Krafft is on his way to Chicago for a unique conference organized by bestselling author Elizabeth Winters. The Logos Alive project selected 753 applicants to attend, all of whom had a single word assigned to them that will later be compiled for the prologue for Winters’ next novel. Chris’ journey takes a bizarre turn when news breaks that Winters has died en route in a plane crash. Stunned attendees show up at the conference to hear from her partner, who tells them about the next part of the project. Each participant (all of them literary junkies) will have a microchip implanted that contains 100 words of the forthcoming Winters novel. But the book won’t be published for more than 100 years, when scientists will retrieve the chips and the manuscript will be reassembled. Of course, the Logos participants have to agree to not be cremated. Chris, who is newly single after his girlfriend left him, is enough of a Winters fan to eagerly agree to the chip, and his new conference friend Beth also signs on. But with Chris despairing over his ex and Beth just a temporary companion, he struggles to unlock Winters’ mystery amid a sea of the author’s other admirers. Morrissey’s concise novel is delightfully literary and pulls in enough modern tech and internet realities to keep the genre current. The story revels in a background debate about fame versus talent and whether Winters’ bizarre stunts are her only offering, a view voiced mainly by Chris’ former girlfriend. It’s all approached very warmly, this desire these devotees have for a mystery, breaking news, and to feel a part of something grand. Strongly written with some light moments, the tale delivers an up-in-the-air premise that nicely amplifies its introspective tone.
An inventive, reflective story about cultural phenomena and personal connections to literature.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-7331949-2-1
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Twelve Winters Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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