An intriguing mix of fable, philosophy and witty fun.
From the mysterious Swede behind the pseudonym Davys, a lively fourth book of sophisticated Aesopian fables set in a city much like those of the modern West, except for the fact that it's populated by walking, talking stuffed animals.
Like its predecessors, the final volume of the Mollisan Town quartet (it began in 2007 with Amberville, followed by Lanceheim and Tourquai) is set in a specific district, in this case the seedy, down-at-the-heels Yok. The book consists of four long stories. In “Sors,” the brutish restaurateur/racketeer Dragon Aguado Molina throws barriers in the way of the dashing but dim Fox Antonio Ortega, who, hopelessly smitten, seeks the hand of the dragon’s daughter, Beatrice Cockatoo. In “Pertiny,” long-suffering Erik Gecko, brewery worker and abused younger brother, tries to help his siblings and tormentors, Leopold Leopard and Rasmus Panther, chase their dream of TV-newsreader stardom—and gropes toward finding a way out for himself. “Corbod” features a dissatisfied rock guitarist, Mike Chimpanzee, and a genie who enjoins him to come up with three wishes. While Mike struggles to come up with suitably nonmaterialistic items, the two ("Cloud" and "Mr. Rock Star Ape," as they refer to each other) bicker. The entertaining “Mindie,” told in overlapping documents and testimonies, features Vincent Hare, a brooding self-styled philosopher who's achingly aware that time is always slipping away: “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” he says again and again. Davys makes ingenious use both of traditional folktales and of his conceit, and the book is charming, but at times it does feel a bit like a grab bag.
An intriguing mix of fable, philosophy and witty fun.Pub Date: July 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-179747-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An inordinately ambitious portrayal of the life and mission of abolitionist John Brown, from the veteran novelist whose previous fictional forays into American history include The New World (1978) and The Relation of My Imprisonment (not reviewed). Banks's story takes the form of a series of lengthy letters written, 40 years after Brown's execution, by his surviving son Owen in response to the request of a professor (himself a descendant of William Lloyd Garrison) who is planning a biography of the antislavery martyr. Owen's elaborate tale, frequently interrupted by digressive analyses of his own conflicted feelings about his family's enlistment in their father's cause, traces a pattern of family losses and business failings that seemed only to heighten ``the Old Man's'' fervent belief that he had been chosen by God to lead the slaves to freedom. As we observe the increasingly wrathful actions of Brown, his sons, and his followers, Banks patiently reveals and explores the motivations that will lead to their involvement with the Underground Railroad, the bloody slaughter (by Brown's self-proclaimed ``Army of the North'') of ``pro-slave settlers'' in Kansas, and finally the fateful attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. In many ways, this is very impressive fiction—obviously a painstakingly researched one, with a genuine understanding of both the particulars and the attitudes of its period. The slowly building indirect characterization of ``Father Abraham, making his terrible, final sacrifice to his God'' has some power. But Owen's redundant agonies of conscience (especially regarding his sexual naivetÇ) grow tiresome, and the novel is enormously overlong (e.g., Banks gives us the full nine-page text of a sermon Brown preaches, comparing himself to Job). Cloudsplitter will undoubtedly be much admired. But it penetrates less convincingly into the enigma of John Brown than did a novel half its length, Leonard Ehrlich's God's Angry Man, published 60 years ago. Once again, sadly, Banks's reach has exceeded his grasp. ($125,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-016860-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
IN THE NEWS
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
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