by Barry Gifford ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1998
One neo-noir thriller too many from Gifford (Baby Cat-Face, 1995, etc.). When Gifford’s surrealistic slices of down-and-out life in the South and Southwest started appearing (in the series of novels featuring Sailor and his true love Lula), they sounded a fresh chord. He nicely mixed laconic hustlers and heroes with a hard- boiled prose and the hectic pace and crowded adventures of a folk tale, creating a wry variation on noirish thrillers. The books were both sardonic and violent. But the formula has grown somewhat stale; even Gifford seems to be losing interest. This time out, the story begins as a typically kinky thriller, featuring Ava Varazo, a tough and alluring prostitute intent on settling scores with her boss, Indio Descato, a fatally self-confident hood.. She needs help to do so, and DelRay Mudo, a restless mechanic, perfectly fits the bill: He’s an outsider, enamored of her, and not shy of violence. With DelRay’s help, Ava manages to rip off Indio. Then the tale takes one of several jarring turns. Ava isn’t simply a lost soul; she’s a Mexican revolutionary, and the money she steals from Indio isn’t meant to bankroll their life together but to buy weapons for her comrades. DelRay follows her south, and gets drawn into the uprising against the Mexican government (the rebels refer to themselves as “The Countless Raindrops,” anticipating a groundswell of support). Other characters show up, including a tough, honorable American ex-soldier and his black wife and, of course, Indio and his boys following Ava’s trail. Then, curiously, Gifford allows the narrative to dwindle to a stop; some characters die off-stage, others disappear, and a fragmentary diary, kept by a prostitute, intrudes. The ending is needlessly cryptic. Gifford remains a talented technician. There is nasty humor, and some wonderfully peculiar characters here, but there isn’t much else. A puzzling, rather inert, work.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-100249-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
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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by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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