Occasional sharp insights, but the book is not as strong as some of Martin’s previous efforts.
Actors have difficulty distinguishing performance from life in Martin’s latest (Trespass, 2007, etc.).
The title character, whose great secret is his unjustified sense of responsibility for his mother’s suicide, begins his acting career in New York in 1974. During a weekend at the beach, Edward experiences two life-changing events: He seduces beautiful actress Madeleine Delavergne, and he is saved from drowning by aspiring actor Guy Margate. Not sure who is more bound to whom, Guy and Edward, who look somewhat alike, become lifelong competitors both as actors and as Madeleine’s lovers. At first Guy gets the roles and good reviews, while Edward wins Madeleine. Then during a season away at a summer theater, Edward transforms himself as an actor and begins to find genuine success. But Guy and a pregnant Madeleine have married, supposedly for propriety’s sake. Although Madeleine’s pregnancy turns out to be ectopic, and although Edward and Madeleine fall into each other’s arms almost as soon they run into each other, her marriage with Guy continues. Skip ahead six years. Guy has stopped acting, zealously devoting himself to Madeleine and her burgeoning career. She and Edward, who is also doing well, find themselves cast as lovers in Uncle Vanya. Offstage they are as attracted as ever, while Edward and Guy are mutually hostile. Then tragedy strikes. Much is made of the 1970s setting, but these characters seem to live in an earlier, more uptight decade. The arch narrative tone might be forgiven as purposely actor-ish if the plot didn’t feel so forced.
Occasional sharp insights, but the book is not as strong as some of Martin’s previous efforts.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52584-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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