This is Self's first book, an interconnected collection of stories published in England in 1991 but held back in the US until the moment Self attained trans-Atlantic culthood. Self (My Idea of Fun, p. 243, etc.) has previously proven his skill at phantasmagoria, but he's less impressive here. Sharply tweaking a spectrum of mental health and social work philosophies, Self is on a mission to point out that therapists who treat delusional problems are themselves the ones with the problems. In the title story, a mock academic paper, a psychology researcher explains how he came to discover the remarkably unscientific Quantity Theory—which holds that there's a fixed amount of sanity in any given society at any given time, and a small patch of insanity in one area of that society will result in a small patch of sanity elsewhere. (Eventually ``psychic field disruption,'' planned insanity to create sanity for someone else, becomes a popular self-help routine. It's just the karma theory, given a spin of European nihilism.) Self's working method for this collection becomes apparent too quickly: He hits on a kooky, half-true theory, then backs up into his parking space. But his stories are contrived in their efforts to shock us, and the ideas themselves are like outtakes from undergraduate stoner-philosopher what-if sessions. It's only when Self gets away from his adman mentality to really do some great, not readily marketable writing that we catch glimpses of his brilliance—as in ``Mono-Cellular,'' which shifts from a first-person account of experiencing life through the senses into fabulous elliptical blather, like the best of the late-period, whacked-out CÇline. Those sympathetic to Self's fantasies, which can be fun-house amusing, should read where he came from to know how much he's evolved.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-585-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
Not just for ghost addicts.
A collection of pleasantly creepy stories follows Hill’s debut novel (Heart Shaped Box, 2007).
Published in a number of magazines from 2001 to the present, most of the stories display the unself-conscious dash that made Hill’s novel an intelligent pleasure. In addition to the touches of the supernatural, some heavy, some light, the stories are largely united by Hill’s mastery of teenaged-male guilt and anxiety, unrelieved by garage-band success or ambition. One of the longest and best, “Voluntary Committal,” is about Nolan, a guilty, anxious high-school student, Morris, his possibly autistic or perhaps just congenitally strange little brother, and Eddie, Nolan’s wild but charming friend. Morris, whose problems dominate but don’t completely derail his family’s life, spends the bulk of his time in the basement creating intricate worlds out of boxes. Eddie and Nolan spend their time in accepted slacker activities until Eddie, whose home life is rough, starts pushing the edges, leading to real mischief, a big problem for Nolan who would rather stay within the law. It’s Morris who removes the problem for the big brother he loves, guaranteeing perpetual guilt and anxiety for Nolan. “My Father’s Mask” is a surprisingly romantic piece about a small, clever family whose weekend in an inherited country place involves masks, time travel and betrayal. The story least reliant on the supernatural may leave the most readers pining for a full-length treatment: “Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead” reunites a funny but failed standup comedian with his equally funny ex-high school sweetheart Harriet, now married and a mother. Bobby has come back to Pittsburgh, tail between his legs, substitute teaching and picking up the odd acting job, and it is on one of those gigs, a low-budget horror film, that the couple reconnects, falling into their old comedic rhythms.
Not just for ghost addicts.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-114797-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Screenplay prose.
Debut thriller from the host of PBS’s Traveling Lite proves its own title. The sole survivor of a ski-slope nabbing of the US president, Secret Service Agent Scot Harvath is America’s latest cookie-cutter superspy to be vaulted into international intrigue by terrorism. All evidence points to the Mideast’s largest terrorist organization, but Harvath’s not fooled—he knows that Middle East groups “are not tacticians. . . . Essentially, they’re cowards. They don’t do in-your-face operations.” “Call it an ingrained bigotry,” but Harvath just knows that a Mideast terrorist group could not pull off a scam of this magnitude. Turns out he’s right—it was the Swiss. Aided by a pair of conniving senators and a squirrelly vice president, a crack Swiss commando unit has snatched President Potus and stuffed him away inside a mountain. When Harvath’s investigation starts to get warm, he’s framed—and won’t be able to clear his name unless he can free the president. Oh, yes, there’s also a Swiss agent named Claudia who’s hot and knows how to handle a 9mm SIG-Sauer 229 semiautomatic. Thor’s tangled writing often interferes with the plot-drenching: “The uncomfortable hog tie position in which he was restrained threatened to drive him insane”; “He lay in a trance like state in the warm void half-way between sleeping and waking until his mind began to assemble different explanations for what he was hearing and he felt himself being forcibly dragged upward toward the surface world of the wakeful.”
Screenplay prose.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-3673-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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