An engrossing, relatable tale about letting go.
The second book in Wictor’s (Ghosts and Ballyhoo, 2013, etc.) Ghosts trilogy tells the darkly humorous tale of an unusual friendship between a quadriplegic and a depressed copywriter.
In the second book in a uniquely ambitious trilogy composed of a memoir, a novel and a diary, Wictor expands on characters from the memoir to craft a story of both barely repressed anger and uncommon love. Narrated by Elliot Finell, a 36-year-old marketing copywriter, the book begins with his first conversation with Trey Gillespie, a man who fell off of a stool 22 years ago and lost the use of his arms and legs, with sensations in his limbs replaced by constant pain. Trey, it seems, has the ability to get people to open up. Even the very private Elliot discovers he can’t help but tell Trey all sorts of private things. Following that first meeting, Elliot confronts his girlfriend, Gary Pruett (yes, like a guy’s name), starting an argument that rattles his relationship and causes him to have a heart attack. As the story progresses, readers follow Elliot during this difficult point in his life, learning that he’s had a poor relationship with his family since he was a child and that his siblings teased him for being fat. He’s struggling to deal with losing the only woman he’d ever loved, whom he cared enough about to argue with her over something she refused to deal with. Elliot also deepens his relationship with Trey, whose ominous warning at their first meeting—“I had enough of this shit”—steadily proves to be more than mere words as the bitter man in the wheelchair asks an unthinkable favor of his new friend. Throughout, it’s a surprising, difficult yet intensely honest story filled with compelling characters; the way personal details are exposed through voices and actions—perhaps thanks to Wictor’s memoir-writing experience—may make readers wonder if these are real people he’s writing about. Although frequently dramatic, the story is, like life, peppered with a healthy dose of humor, sometimes even in the most trying situations, making the story seem all the more real and its impact all the more heart-wrenching.
An engrossing, relatable tale about letting go.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615819143
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Thomas Wictor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
In part a perfectly paced mystery story, in part an Indian Wuthering Heights: a gorgeous and seductive fever dream of a...
A brilliantly constructed first novel that untangles an intricate web of sexual and caste conflict in a vivid style reminiscent of Salman Rushdie's early work.
The major characters are Estha and Rahel, the fraternal twin son and daughter of a wealthy family living in the province of Kerala. The family's prosperity is derived from a pickle factory and rubber estate, and their prideful Anglophilia essentially estranges them from their country's drift toward Communism and their ``inferiors' '' hunger for independence and equality. The events of a crucial December day in 1969—including an accidental death that may have been no accident and the violent consequences that afflict an illicit couple who have broken "the Love Law''—are the moral and narrative center around which the episodes of the novel repeatedly circle. Shifting backward and forward in time with effortless grace, Roy fashions a compelling nexus of personalities that influence the twins' "eerie stealth'' and furtive interdependence. These include their beautiful and mysteriously remote mother Ammu; her battling "Mammachi'' (who runs the pickle factory) and "Pappachi'' (an insufficiently renowned entomologist); their Oxford-educated Marxist Uncle Chacko and their wily "grandaunt'' Baby Kochamma; and the volatile laborite "Untouchable'' Velutha, whose relationship with the twins' family will prove his undoing. Roy conveys their explosive commingling in a vigorous prose dominated by odd syntactical and verbal combinations and coinages (a bad dream experience during midday nap-time is an "aftermare'') reminiscent of Gerard Manly Hopkins's "sprung rhythm,'' incantatory repetitions, striking metaphors (Velutha is seen ``standing in the shade of the rubber trees with coins of sunshine dancing on his body'') and sensuous descriptive passages (``The sky was orange, and the coconut trees were sea anemones waving their tentacles, hoping to trap and eat an unsuspecting cloud'').
In part a perfectly paced mystery story, in part an Indian Wuthering Heights: a gorgeous and seductive fever dream of a novel, and a truly spectacular debut. (First serial to Granta)Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45731-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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