Major author, minor work.
In the latest from McGuane (Gallatin Canyon, 2007, etc.), the narrative voice is often very funny, but its skewed perspective comes at the expense of plot momentum and character development.
In the first sentence, the protagonist introduces himself as “Berl Pickett, Dr. Berl Pickett,” before proceeding to explain that his full name is “Irving Berlin Pickett,” his mother’s choice, where his father had wanted “Lefty Frizzell Pickett,” which, the narrator says, “would have been worse.” Though perhaps more appropriate, for the novel is like one long string of honky-tonk jukebox selections, offering various themes on love gone wrong or awry, sex as a substitute for love, love as a substitute for sex, and the ultimate question of whether friendship is a necessary component for love or the antithesis of romance. The narrator defines love as “that moronic oblivion that makes the world go round,” and explains that “the essence of romance (is an) indifference to truth.” Yet the small-town Montana doctor is less a cynic than a hopeless romantic, his life complicated by not only a series of inappropriate or misguided sexual liaisons but a couple of deaths that occur on his watch. He faces manslaughter charges in the one for which he insists he is innocent, an innocence tarnished by the guilt he feels in the other death, a complicity that no one suspects. There is also an airplane crash, which both results in another ill-fated romantic quest and provides thematic resonance with the references to 9/11 scattered here and there. If such summary sounds like a jumble, the narrator himself suggests that his account may be suspect, that “We had, between how I was perceived by my colleagues and the ways in which I saw myself, true cognitive dissonance,” and that “I started to look for signs of craziness in myself, and I found plenty.” Though the novelist has often balanced metaphysical depth with dark humor, here the balance seems off.
Major author, minor work.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4155-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
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
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
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