Hardcover debut for avant-garde horror writer Grimson (Stainless, 1996), enjoyment of whose fancies leaves one thrilled, if feeling rather unclean. If anything, Grimson has intensified his Hollywood Rock- Gothic, ultra-neon, burning prose. Plot here is detail-cumulative, a twisting-on-a-dime, hairpin-turn mode in which each incident carries a supercharged light. Young avant-garde moviemaker Lisa Nova, whose surging thoughts about film reflect her impulsive, Mixmaster, kaleidoscopic imagination, wants to get in with horrormeister Selwyn Popcorn, 49, who has made some cult films she admires. But she's been savagely diddled by her older, married bedmate, Lou Greenwood, a top film executive, and been videoed doing something she now regrets (what, we never know). To get back at Lou, then, Lisa goes to Boro, a black witch doctor waited on by flesh-eating zombies out of The Night of the Living Dead, who puts a curse on Greenwood's whole family. The curse goes so haywire and excessive that Lou's vengeful widow is driven into some nasty magic of her own. Things get so hot for Lisa that she flies to Rio to visit her wizard-of-chemistry dad and sinks ever deeper into the occult. By the time she arrives back in L.A. (after trips to Manhattan and the Berlin film festival), she's been responsible for several deaths; and she gets tailed, and frequently grilled, by the LAPD. While in South America, she dropped some rare chemical her father had wrung from a vine and found herself able to transfer her dreams straight onto 16-mm film stock. These dream-films feature real murders that she has to pretend, after an enthusiastic Selwyn Popcorn screens them, are just very inventive special effects. Overlong, bends at its joinings, and isn't for everyone—but full of take-that, fist-in-your-face daring.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-105233-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Deservedly popular Moriarty invigorates the tired social-issue formula of women’s fiction through wit, good humor, sharp...
After last year’s best-selling The Husband’s Secret, Australian Moriarty brings the edginess of her less-known The Hypnotist’s Love Story (2012) to bear in this darkly comic mystery surrounding a disastrous parents' night at an elementary school fundraiser.
Thanks to strong cocktails and a lack of appetizers, Pirriwee Public’s Trivia Night turns ugly when sloshed parents in Audrey Hepburn and Elvis costumes start fights at the main entrance. To make matters worse, out on the balcony where a smaller group of parents have gathered, someone falls over the railing and dies. Was it an accident or murder? Who is the victim? And who, if anyone, is the murderer? Backtrack six months as the cast of potential victims and perps meet at kindergarten orientation and begin alliances and rivalries within the framework of domestic comedy-drama. There’s Chloe’s opinionated, strong-willed mom, Madeline, a charmingly imperfect Everywoman. Happily married to second husband Ed, Madeline is deeply hurt that her older daughter wants to move in with her ex-husband and his much younger, New-Age–y second wife; even worse, the couple’s waifish daughter, Skye, will be in Chloe’s kindergarten class. Madeline’s best friend is Celeste, mother of twins Max and Josh. It’s hard for Madeline and the other moms not to envy Celeste. She's slim, rich and beautiful, and her marriage to hedge fund manager Perry seems too perfect to be true; it is. Celeste and Madeline befriend young single mother Jane, who has moved to the coast town with her son, Ziggy, the product of a one-night stand gone horribly wrong. After sweet-natured Ziggy is accused of bullying, the parents divide into defenders and accusers. Tensions mount among the mothers' cliques and within individual marriages until they boil over on the balcony. Despite a Greek chorus of parents and faculty sharing frequently contradictory impressions, the truth remains tantalizingly difficult to sort out.
Deservedly popular Moriarty invigorates the tired social-issue formula of women’s fiction through wit, good humor, sharp insight into human nature and addictive storytelling.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16706-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
How Book Adaptations Fared at Golden Globe Noms
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out...
A post-apocalyptic novel in which Hig, who only goes by this mononym, finds not only survival, but also the possibility of love.
As in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the catastrophe that has turned the world into its cataclysmic state remains unnamed, but it involves “The Blood,” a highly virulent and contagious disease that has drastically reduced the population and has turned most of the remaining survivors into grim hangers-on, fiercely protective of their limited territory. Hig lives in an abandoned airplane hangar and keeps a 1956 Cessna, which he periodically takes out to survey the harsh and formidable landscape. While on rare occasions he spots a few Mennonites, fear of “The Blood” generally keeps people at more than arm’s length. Hig has established a defensive perimeter by a large berm, competently guarded by Bangley, a terrifying friend but exactly the kind of guy you want on your side, since he can pot intruders from hundreds of yards away, and he has plenty of firepower to do it. Haunted by a voice he heard faintly on the radio, Hig takes off one day in search of fellow survivors and comes across Pops and Cima, a father and daughter who are barely eking out a living off the land by gardening and tending a few emaciated sheep. Like Bangley, Pops is laconic and doesn’t yield much, but Hig understandably finds himself attracted to Cima, the only woman for hundreds of miles and a replacement for the ache Hig feels in having lost his pregnant wife, Melissa, years before.
Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out some hope that human relationships can be redemptive.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95994-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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