While it occasionally strays from pressing matters, this tale illuminates a bizarre investigation.
A historical novel explores the relentless hunt for Communists in America in the 1950s.
It is 1953 and FBI agent Larry Crane is sent to the National Institutes of Health. His mission is to investigate Dr. Harold Hungerford, who has not yet signed a loyalty oath. The oath is meant to assure the U.S. government that Hungerford is not a Communist. The physician insists he is not one, though he refuses to sign the document. Crane wants to know whether Hungerford has ever associated with Communists. Hungerford divulges the name of Dr. Norman Bethune, a deceased Canadian physician, thinking that if he is going to give up a name, it might as well be someone who is dead. Bethune, or “Beth” as he was known, had a colorful past that included serving in World War I and tending to poor patients in Detroit. Beth, much like Hungerford, suffered from tuberculosis. Hungerford met him while both were recovering from the disease at a treatment facility in Saranac Lake, New York. Was Beth a Communist during his time there and was he using his influence to foment Soviet propaganda? The story goes on to examine the details of Beth’s stay and the impact his actions had years down the road. As strange as the whole situation might seem, Holtzman’s (Blame, 2016, etc.) book effectively portrays the truly frightening aspects of the Red Scare. Does the federal government really have a right to tell you what to sign and can it ruin your career if you refuse? The narrative raises such concerns, though it is unfocused in places. Not much of interest happens during Beth’s sojourn in Saranac Lake, outside of some tense moments when he receives an experimental treatment to intentionally collapse one of his lungs. An assortment of characters surrounding the facility and details of the dangers of asbestos provide some substance, though it is not until the spotlight returns to Hungerford that the story becomes engrossing. By 1953, Beth (who was a real person) is dead and tuberculosis is on the decline, but what about a man who, in the eyes of the government, is potentially tainted by association?
While it occasionally strays from pressing matters, this tale illuminates a bizarre investigation.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Cloudsplitter Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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