Soulful on a subliminal seafloor.
Magic-drawing-pad paragraphs from psychotropic child genius Robbins (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, 2000, etc.).
What can a poor reviewer do when attempting to skimble-skamble through that celebrated cerebellum in search of storyline when each page fades immediately? Might Robbins not review himself and quote heavily from a hairy bonfire of half-naked similes, the kind that leave a girl mellowed out, disrobed, lustful, and movie-going on the living-room rug? And yet, something serious, a playfulness and sense of fun, deep-surging in the lingual circuits, rises from the verbal infinitudes whispering from Robbins’s midbrain, a heroic antitoxin to the electronic wasteland of sitcoms and feel-good flicks. Using his outsized scrotum as a parachute, Tanuki, a potbellied, nearly tailless East Asian wild dog that walks on its hind legs, falls to earth from the Other World. After much success with country girls, Tanuki fails to seduce cosmopolite femmes and so spends a winter shape-shifting into human form. Now incognito, thieving Tanuki enters Kyoto—and so begin Candide-like adventures in counter-Zen philosophy: Tanuki’s philosophical duels with Kitsune the fox, his marriage to Miho, and his fathering of daughter Kazu. Centuries later, Tanuki’s descendants turn up in Seattle. Then, too, we meet American MIAs who prefer Asia to the States; Miss Ginger Sweetie, a Bangkok whore studying comparative literature; the guitar-playing Dickie Goldwire; godawful Elvis impersonator Elvisuit, who sometimes sings at Patpong’s Cherry Bomb Club; and Madame Ko and her tumbling tanukis in the Southeast Asian circus. All leads to an autumnal farewell: “All across the clearing, the dying grass and sun were practically the same shade of yellow. Last-minute shoppers crowded the pollen parlors, and every other flower-head drooped from bee-weight . . . Already rubbed red by nights of foreplay, boughs, each leaf alert, awaited the transformative ejaculation of frost.”
Soulful on a subliminal seafloor.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-80332-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Great entertainment for fans of historical epics.
This 11th entry in Cornwell’s Saxon Tales series (The Flame Bearer, 2016, etc.) is a rousing, bloodthirsty tale of tumult in early-days Britain.
Uhtred, the powerful 10th-century Lord of Bebbanburg, sets out with less than a hundred men to relieve the siege of Ceaster and rescue Prince Æthelstan, King Edward’s son. But someone has tricked Uhtred, who has been lured across Britain “to rescue a man who did not need rescuing.” Someone has drawn him away from defense of his native Northumbria, and he determines to “discover the name of an enemy.” Around the year 920, Britain is still a jumble of small kingdoms. Edward is the self-appointed Anglorum Saxonum Rex, the first king of the Angles and the Saxons. He wants to annex Northumbria, but Uhtred will not swear loyalty to him. For one thing, Uhtred’s son-in-law Sigtryggr is already king there. Meanwhile, Christianity is beginning to spread, but the 60-something pagan Uhtred wants none of that—his gods can walk on water too, if they want to. Although the plot is complicated, it boils down to this: Uhtred wants to kill the Norseman who wants to kill him and conquer Northumbria. The story has marvelous details, such as the fierce warrior Svart who has a beard with bones woven into it. Swords have names like Serpent-Breath, Soul-Stealer, and Wasp-Sting. And be they Saxon, Angle, Dane, or Norse, everyone is enamored of wolves, especially the “wolf-warriors” who use henbane ointment to make them crazy before battle. Uhtred observes that King Edward is caught in “a tangle of love, loyalties and hate, mostly hate….The only thing that was simple was war.” And war there certainly is. Serpent-Breath and his many murderous cousins inflict bloody butchery in spectacular hand-to-hand combat. A Christian man laments that “my god weeps for Englaland…my god wants peace.” Alas, that god gets no satisfaction in this grand adventure.
Great entertainment for fans of historical epics.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-256317-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A charming imagining of the historical gunner girls.
When antiques dealer Cara Hargraves discovers a biscuit tin holding a locket, a photograph, and a diary dating back to World War II, she becomes determined to discover the identity of the smiling young woman in uniform.
Kelly (The Allure of Attraction, 2018, etc.) deftly balances intrigue with mystery and historical detail in her latest novel. As the chapters alternate between the present day and the war era, Cara unpacks mementos conjuring up the life of Louise Keene, a young woman chafing at the confines of Haybourne, her Cornish village. While her mother and Mrs. Moss may be convinced she’ll marry Gary Moss someday—just as soon as the war ends and he returns home to run his father’s small law firm—Louise herself has other plans. So when her beautiful, outgoing cousin, Kate, invites her to a dance, Louise pushes aside a self-deprecating glance in the mirror and musters up her courage. There, she meets the dashing Flight Lt. Paul Bolton, a man who captures her heart. Their whirlwind romance is thrown a curveball when Paul is suddenly deployed, and Louise sets off on an adventure, following him out of Haybourne. Eager to put herself and her mathematical skills to work, Louise enlists, joining the women’s branch of the British army as a gunner girl, a member of an anti-aircraft unit that calculates the locations of enemy planes. Her correspondence with Paul becomes increasingly passionate, and they quickly marry during a rare leave. But a string of unanswered letters is only the first clue that Paul has secrets that will utterly upend Louise’s life. Meanwhile, in the present, as recently divorced and romantically gun-shy Cara chases down the clues in the tin, she meets Liam McGown, her new, rather charmingly disheveled neighbor. A reader of medieval history, Liam chivalrously helps Cara on her quest, and love may be around the corner for the sleuths, too.
A charming imagining of the historical gunner girls.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9641-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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