Imagine Robert Ludlum hallucinating at his word-processor while weaving a plot combining postmodern art, Middle Eastern terrorism, and a talking vibrator, and you come close to what Robbins has accomplished here. Robbins' considerable audience has waited six years (since Jitterbug Perfume, 1984) to read sentences like this: "As soon as she had replaced the vibrator in her underwear drawer, the panties ceased their girlish gossiping and began to chirp, 'Who? Who? Who?' Whose name had she called aloud when she straddled the white pony of orgasm?" Those readers who are not Robbins fans, however, should be warned that over the course of 400+ pages of equally jolly prose we follow the entwined fates of Ellen Cherry and Boomer Petway, a young artist couple; a southern evangelist who is scheming to provoke the End of the World; and a trio of talking objects—Spoon, Dirty Sock, and Can o' Beans—who must somehow trek across America to Jerusalem in time to prevent the holocaust. Meanwhile, Robbins devotes entire chapters to his theories on postmodern art, the true meaning of the Old and New Testaments, even the mysteries of the label on a can of Van Camp Pork 'n' Beans. Finally, then, Robbins goes for a schmaltzy wrap-up, in which the evil preacher's plan to induce Armageddon is put on hold by none other than a sinister Vice-President of the US. The preacher goes mad in an Arab-Jewish restaurant in Manhattan as the New York Giants win the 1986 Super Bowl, and Ellen and Boomer move to Jerusalem to install Boomer's latest sculpture. Despite a multitude of subplots, this is a novel that doesn't know where it's going until it arrives.
Pub Date: May 1, 1990
ISBN: 0553377884
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1990
IN THE NEWS
A suspenseful story that examines how families haunt each other in life and death; possibly too creepy for late-night...
A college professor returns to his hometown and confronts figurative and literal demons from his childhood in this modern-day ghost story.
The novel opens as Will Conner attends a faculty-student mixer in Manhattan and talks with his teaching assistant, Beth, about the return of some disturbing dreams he’s been having. The dreams contain flashbacks to a confusing night from his youth when his mother hosted a “spirit circle” in their home. Beth tries, unsuccessfully, to help Will understand the dreams. As Will walks home after the event, he receives a visit from an unearthly being, a demon or spirit, perhaps a hallucination, he’s not sure. He hurries the rest of the way to his apartment, where he is greeted by a ringing telephone and the news that his mother is in the hospital, unconscious. Will returns to his small New England hometown to care for his mother, who suffered a head injury. During his visit, he reconnects with a long list of characters from his childhood and tries to determine what happened on that fateful night from his youth that continues to haunt his dreams. Will begins to detect secrets about the people he grew up with and how those secrets may have impacted his own life. Yet, every time he moves closer to discovering the central mystery, another obstacle materializes to thwart his efforts and make him question his path. Written in a fast-paced, colloquial prose, the text will pull readers in right from the start. Drawing on New England’s historical connection to witchcraft and mob hysteria, the author brings to life contemporary covens and small-town reactions to the unexplainable. Despite the novel’s heavy emphasis on flashbacks and retelling of family folklore, which can feel overly convoluted, the author creates nuanced and realistic interpersonal relationships that lend much-needed grounding to this darkly supernatural story. Equal parts engaging and creepy, this twisty tale deftly examines how secrets and regret can continue to reverberate through generations.
A suspenseful story that examines how families haunt each other in life and death; possibly too creepy for late-night reading.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-335-21755-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A late autumn retrospective, accomplished with a long lens, in which Lyman Ward, retired, ill and wheelchair-bound, attempts to affirm the continuity of the past and the "Doppler effect" of time by reconstructing his grandparents' lives. This in partial contrast to and rebuttal of his son at Berkeley "interested in change but only as a process. . . in values, but only as data" (the schism of his last book, All the Little Live Things). Much as one respects the amplitude of this novel and its sincerity, it all goes on and on (except for occasional present day interruptions) and one is never really very interested in Susan Burling Ward and her deracination from the cultured East to the uncivilized West in the 1870's by her husband, an engineer. It was always for her an "exile" and except for the terminal incidents ( a muted love affair which resulted in the accidental death of a child, her lover's suicide and permanent separation from her husband) there is almost no narrative incentive. The repose, however pleasant, becomes a kind of narcosis.
Pub Date: March 19, 1971
ISBN: 0141185473
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1971
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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