A boy-meets-girl tale that veers into strange avenues and offers a maelstrom of love-struck possibilities.
Vigorito (Just a Couple of Days, 2015, etc.) details a modern-day love story and its links to the past.
When Merlin Otherwise and Lila Louise first kiss, it is on top of a float in an illegal parade in San Francisco. It is Halloween, and both are dressed as pirates. “We’ve met before, I’m certain,” Merlin tells Lila as their romance instantly blossoms. And while it initially seems merely a cheeky pickup line, it may very well hold some truth. Flashing back to the 18th century, the reader is introduced to two real pirates. Flaming Jane and Crow are swashbucklers of the high seas who, though lawless in their own ways, are not “toothless and swill-sipping” scoundrels. Flaming Jane is an educated woman who “defied her proper place as the property of her admiral husband,” while Crow is an autodidact who relishes the “relative quietude and isolation” of the ship’s crow’s nest. As a plot develops around a search for the “treasure of all treasures,” connections are increasingly made between the past and the present. But can Merlin and Lila’s relationship endure the ongoing existential crisis that is life in the 21st century? What about Jane and Crow’s ability to master the life of outlaws on the high seas? While the protagonists and their goals are essentially clear, the novel is at its best when exploring supporting characters. Whether it is Lila’s pooch, Dogface, a “Tanzanian zebra shepherd” capable of licking herself into “auto-cunnilingual leg spasms,” or an ex-boyfriend, the dubiously named guru Ivan Humble (of whom much can be, and is, explained), the true peculiarities of interest tend to arise in the background. Readers eager to hear young, antihero, Tom Robbins–esque lovers declare their adoration for each other will certainly find contentment within these pages. For those less intrigued by spunky love birds who insist “life is performance art” (as Merlin and Lila concur), all is not lost. What helps to set the story apart from similar fare are the nuanced, often unexpected villains, animals, and biblical allusions along the way.
A boy-meets-girl tale that veers into strange avenues and offers a maelstrom of love-struck possibilities.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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