Small in scope, but an elegant foray into beauty gleaned from tragedy.
A lyrical first novel from Pierce (stories: Galaxy Girls: Wonder Women, 1994) about a tragic death and a corresponding
birth. Part expos‚ of survivor’s guilt and part family chronicle, the tale opens with a dramatic crash: driving home drunk one winter night, Leonarda and her boyfriend, Danny, slide off a bridge and into the Charles River, killing Danny and transforming Leo’s life. Driven by the slow exploration of its eccentric characters, the narrative spans nine months, from the accident to the birth of the child Leo didn’t know she was carrying when they crashed. She attempts to continue life as planned, finishing her thesis and preparing her audition piece at the conservatory where she studies violin, while also grappling with the approach of single parenthood in the shadow of death. Slowly rebuilding ties with her otherworldly parents also strains the normally retiring Leo, though at the same time these struggles serve as impetus for her in finding an identity that’s separate both from the domineering Danny and from her dramatically consuming parents. Some of the more engaging episodes spring from Leo’s childhood memories of her family’s blissfully lonely old Cambridge house: sleeping on the widow’s walk, tightrope-walking the banister, creating her own, odd animal sanctuary—raising herself because her parents couldn’t. Lydia, a recluse since Leo’s birth, provided for her daughter little besides an image of sorrowful beauty, while August, when not working in the invention room, doted on his wife. When Leo returns to the family roost, life is unchanged, save that some of the heirlooms have been pawned to pay for toast and tea. Into the small chaos of Leo’s life wanders Kilroy, a chess player with his head in the air and feet on the ground, who offers Leo unconditional love and stability. As the baby’s birth approaches, small miracles start to bloom, transforming all the lives touched by Leo, and by Danny’s death.
Small in scope, but an elegant foray into beauty gleaned from tragedy.Pub Date: March 15, 2000
ISBN: 1-58465-021-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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