An offbeat narrative that struggles to gain traction with adult readers.
A precocious 12-year-old boy joins a cast of quirky characters in this surprising adventure novel.
Whitehouse (Bed, 2012) fills this story with tropes from teen literature. Parents are conspicuously absent; books offer unique comfort; and adults are, by and large, cruel and all-powerful. Bobby Nusku lives with his abusive father and is frequently bullied at school. Since his mother left, Bobby’s primary pastime has been tending the meticulous records he keeps while he awaits her return. He has jars of her hair, bottles of her perfume and all of her jewelry stashed away in hiding spots in his room. Over summer vacation, Bobby forms an unlikely friendship with his neighbor Val Reed and her daughter, Rosa. Val, who works at a mobile library, invites Bobby to visit the truck full of books. There, Bobby falls in love with reading. He longs for the promised escape of a happy ending: “He wanted to be in a book, to have an adventure.” When vacation ends, Bobby snaps under the pressure of his harsh, lonely life. After a moment of aggression, he finds himself back at Val's house. Rather than confront his wrongdoing, Val decides to give Bobby the adventure he craves, and the three run away in the mobile library. They soon meet Joe, a fellow escapee whom they find in the woods and invite along. The foursome grows predictably close as they drive across the U.K., avoid arrest and discover that “family is where it’s found.” The whimsical tone and fanciful flourishes—chapter names include “The Ogre” and “The Non-fire Breathing Dragon”—cross into the cartoony in scenes depicting violence and child abuse. The adults in the novel ask shockingly few questions before making irresponsible decisions that, while convenient for the plot, are highly implausible. Bobby’s desired happy ending clashes sharply with every foreseeable conclusion. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly bewildering to readers accustomed to novels that are grounded in reality.
An offbeat narrative that struggles to gain traction with adult readers.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4943-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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