by Tor Udall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017
A quirky debut novel, heartfelt in its portrayal of human emotions, pleasantly surprising, but slightly overdone.
Five characters—two of whom are ghosts—are linked, in part, by the time they spend at Kew Gardens in London.
Udall’s debut novel introduces a music teacher, Jonah Wilson, who gave up a recording career so he and his late wife, Audrey, could try to start a family. Readers learn through the remembrances of Jonah and another man named Harry Barclay that Audrey, a linguist, had a series of miscarriages before she died and had been visiting Harry, who cares for plants at Kew. Harry looks after Milly, a little girl who loves the gardens as much as he does, but something is amiss—Harry warns her away from some Kew visitors, and others can't see Harry or Milly. Jonah meets Chloe Adams in the gardens, where she’s preparing for an exhibit of her elaborate paper art and origami. Udall folds all of this into a story about grief, pain, and longing but also love, friendship, and desire. Details about Audrey’s lost pregnancies and Jonah’s life as a widower are vivid, and botanical and historical information about Kew Gardens add interest. The supernatural aspects of the story distract from rather than enhance it, though. Some of the prose is a bit overwrought, as in this passage about Jonah on a sleepless night: “He lumbers from room to room, switching on lights, wearing only a T-shirt. His lower half is naked, as vulnerable as a child’s.” The big reveals about what happened to Audrey, who Harry and Milly are, and what will become of Jonah and Chloe come quickly one after the other, lending a slightly rushed feel to the end of the book, although there is room for readers to come to their own conclusions.
A quirky debut novel, heartfelt in its portrayal of human emotions, pleasantly surprising, but slightly overdone.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4088-7863-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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