A muddled spiritual inventory that could have used a lighter touch.
An American man’s existential journey is aided by various women in Baker’s cerebral fourth novel (Dominion, 2006, etc.).
Here’s what we know about narrator Harper Roland: he's single; 37; only living relative is an aunt; lives in downtown Manhattan; burned out after seven years as a war correspondent for a small magazine. These details are thrown out casually, along with a hint that Harper is black. What matters is his emotional state, which is in flux. He’s been dating Devi, an emergency room doctor, but wants something more intense than what she’s willing to offer. He quits the magazine and flies to Paris to work on a screenplay for Davidson, an egotistical director of art-house movies. Intensity is waiting for him in the form of Genevieve, a bohemian beauty who declares, operatically, “you are my man.” They live at fever pitch until, in another bolt from the blue, Genevieve has a breakdown and sets him free. Harper, who identifies with Oedipus, endures the reversal of fortune even though he’s afflicted by “a vast, cosmic emptiness.” This is assuaged by a trip to Rio to join a friend’s bachelor party. In a brothel, he's charmed by a high-minded whore who ruminates on the soul/body connection before pleasuring Harper with the blend, but it’s only further south, down Patagonia way, that he overcomes his dread of becoming another lost soul when he meets fellow American Sylvie, a constitutional lawyer, and feels “a great uprush of kindredness.” Journey’s end? Not quite. Baker tacks on a final section set in Africa. Harper is on safari with Sylvie when they’re abducted by murderous, sociopathic guerrillas. What follows is standard-issue escape and pursuit, but the soul mates still find time to extol the cosmic energy of their first meeting.
A muddled spiritual inventory that could have used a lighter touch.Pub Date: July 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4405-8578-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tyrus Books
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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
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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