A supernatural tale that offers a peculiar but engrossing vision of the future.
In Grass’ novel, a coroner in a post-apocalyptic world braves a nightmarish series of events involving mutants and a mythical beast.
The newest body in Frankie Attanasio’s morgue is the stuff of legend. Dreck is, or was, a creature whose stories parents told to scare misbehaving children. The body on the slab sports elklike antlers and three-fingered hands, and evidently, it’s no secret that Dreck is there; the Reconstruction Corps—essentially the future’s version of the FBI and CIA—wants to pick up the body. But a team can’t make it to Seven Points, in what used to be Pennsylvania, until an impending blizzard passes. In the first of a string of baffling turns, Frankie has a vision of Dreck cryptically telling him, “FIND!” Soon afterward, the coroner finds 13 coins on Dreck’s body, the same coins that a local, well-known “Anonymous Hero” uses as a calling card. Other people want the cadaver and coins, as well, including Seven Points’ mayor. Meanwhile, an odd “gathering of kooks and soapbox preachers, screechers and freaky creatures” forms outside the mortuary. Frankie may find solace and allies in the sewers, where some disfigured people live, but it’s clear that more aggressive types in the “upstairs city” are gunning for him. The coroner has other surprises waiting for him, as well, including some that relate to his own somewhat murky history. His story culminates in a daunting confrontation that unfolds in an otherworldly landscape, and it’s one that Frankie likely won’t survive.
Grass’ initially perplexing narrative becomes clearer as its progresses. It gradually clarifies mysterious figures and unknown motives as well as Frankie’s connection to Dreck. Its fictional world features quite a bit of violence, with fights that turn bloody and gory rather quickly. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of comic relief—in part due to recurring TV talk show Vox Oculii, whose host, Darcy Gantz, is prone to jumping to bizarre conclusions. For example, when the mayor tells her that Frankie isn’t cooperating with him regarding Dreck’s body, she throws out unfounded, sensationalist accusations against the coroner. Grass’ compelling dystopia is set in a future after a catastrophic Long War in which the protagonist fought as a soldier. Still, for a post-apocalyptic world, it appears that most infrastructure, at least in the United States, has remained intact. At the same time, a few people have odd, hilarious notions about the past; for example, some regard Sammy Davis Jr. and others from “the Packrats” as holy figures and consider publications such as Penthouse to be worthy ancient texts. Frankie makes for a solid hero who proves capable in scuffles, be they physical or verbal. The author deliberately steeps minor characters in obscurity, so their personalities don’t shine through until the latter half. However, mutant ally Truckie, who’s not exactly trustworthy, displays irresistible charm almost immediately, as when he bombards Frankie with weird but funny insults, such as “You bitch of a bastard.”
A supernatural tale that offers a peculiar but engrossing vision of the future.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73588-853-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Dickinson Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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