A timely fable of generational angst armed with that old punk ethos: no future.
Hey, what if a book was like Fight Club (1996) but instead of fights, everyone takes a heroic dose of drugs and plays superhero?
This ambitious, half-cracked debut about Generation Z students struggling with a bent concept of the future in the midst of a slow apocalypse is an ambitious but acidic take on superhero stories and the price of growing up. Our nice-guy protagonist is David Fuffman, a struggling engineering student at Princeton University in a time of “Chronostrictesis,” where time itself seems to be running out as climate change threatens the future of the human species. His life changes dramatically when he meets Mathias Blue, a charismatic, wealthy ne’er-do-well who has set up his lair, “The Egg,” as a kind of off-campus, drug-fueled incubator for social change solutions. “At the Egg, you’re always working on your project, your vision, your Thesis—something only you can do,” says Mathias. David’s Achilles’ heel is Haley Roth, his punky high school drug dealer, on whom he has a brutal crush. Jacked up on a new stimulant called Zeronal laced with DMT, the residents of the Egg go through something of a psychic epiphany with visions of the future. David’s thesis becomes the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes, a cartoonish attempt at forming a radicalized Justice League, with appropriately disastrous results summed up in a mock Atlantic article, “Dissent in the Age of Flibberflibbergaboobieism.” The novel takes a dark turn in its final third, as secrets are revealed, rivalries erupt, and Mathias’ dark visions of “The End” fuel a brainwashing from which no one in his orbit remains unscathed. Nemett’s recipe for disaster is sound—a dash of Pynchon, a hint of Neal Stephenson, and a nihilistic undertone that belies a semihopeful denouement. While it never quite finds its balance between social satire and youth in rebellion, it’s still a confident, visceral debut that’s worth the ride.
A timely fable of generational angst armed with that old punk ethos: no future.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944700-76-8
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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