It was fun to see the boyishly aging cops of CHiPs on the road again—and just about everybody hopes Mary and Rhoda will get together once more. But no reappearance could be more welcome than that of Thomas Berger’s fictional centenarian (and more), Jack Crabb, protagonist and, in his way, hero of the now-classic Little Big Man (1964), hands down the ne plus ultra among novels about the American Old West—until now, that is: for we—re about to learn that the resourceful Jack only pretended to die in an old-folks’ home at age 111 (thus eluding his avaricious ghostwriter), and that he survived to relate the comparably amazing adventures that came after his survival of the Battle of Little Big Horn. These occurred during Jack’s itinerant middle years in the several western territories (some not yet states) and abroad, and they include his intimate associations with such eminent and romantic figures as Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Annie Oakley, and Buffalo Bill Cody—and, in a spectacularly hilarious chapter, England’s Queen Victoria. Jack’s Zelig-like penchant for showing up in key places at momentous times occasions vivid first-person accounts of events both ignoble (a farcical misadventure at a “mission school” where he works as a Cheyenne translator) and legendary (the novel’s major set-pieces: “The Gunfight That Never Happened at the O.K. Corral” and the story of the great Indian leader Sitting Bull’s sad fate). All is told in a vigorous colloquial voice whose earthy accents often echo perfectly the impertinent horse sense of Mark Twain (“The Catholics . . . us[e] Latin which nobody understands and therefore seems more like a language God would speak”) and plaintively lament both the white man’s rape of Native America and the ornery persistence with which people continue misunderstanding one another. This magnificent sequel ends with Jack’s teasing half-promise that he—ll live on even longer and tell the rest of his story. And why shouldn’t we believe him? Jack Crabb is already one of the immortals.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-09844-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
