LORD OF CALIFORNIA

Name: LORD OF CALIFORNIA
Author: Andrew Valencia
ISBN: 978-1-63246-059-2

by Andrew Valencia ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 30, 2018

Vaguely dystopian though ultimately life-affirming, Valencia’s novel is an engaging examination of family dynamics and the...

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A novel of intricate family relationships and inheritances set in a future in which California is an independent republic following the “disbandment” of the United States.

When Elliot Temple dies at the beginning of this novel, he leaves a legacy in shambles, for it turns out he’s had five wives and 12 children, each family unit unknown to the others. When the families find out about each other, they get together to try to make sense of the situation and to protect the fragile hold they have on their individual farms. In the Republic of California, land is carefully parceled out, and control of acreage is capped. Elliot’s marital manipulations have created a valuable legacy of 100 acres and more. The story is narrated through three points of view, and while all of the narrators are Elliot’s children, each conveys a vastly different perspective. Thirteen-year-old Ellie, the first narrator, is wise beyond her years: she actively wonders how they can “begin to build a home out of so many broken pieces.” The second narrator is Elliot Jr., a nasty piece of work who tries to manipulate the land situation in his favor. Much of his section is told in flashback, and we get enough glimpses of his father to learn that dad was just as cunning, devious, and vicious as junior. Anthony, the “Mexican” son, narrates the final section. Elliot had wanted Anthony to take a DNA test to prove his paternity and earlier had threatened to kill any child that wasn’t his. The narrative becomes unbearably tense as Elliot Jr. tries to blackmail the extended families into forking over the land and thus disrupts their tenuous stability.

Vaguely dystopian though ultimately life-affirming, Valencia’s novel is an engaging examination of family dynamics and the importance of the legacy of land.

Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-63246-059-2

Page Count: 268

Publisher: Ig Publishing

Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.