A portrait of university life that’s contemplative and nostalgic.
Finch (An Old Betrayal, 2013, etc.) creates a lyrical ode to youth, idealism and love in a contemporary novel about a young man’s year of graduate studies at Oxford University.
There are moments and people that significantly impact a person’s life and spur major transitions, and Yale graduate William Baker experiences both when he arrives on the Fleet campus of Oxford. As he describes his year, he reflects upon the emotional, physical and intellectual journey that ushers him into the world of adulthood. While countless college students around the world routinely engage in activities similar to Will’s, what makes this fairly routine coming-of-age story so appealing is twofold: Finch’s accomplished narrative skills and his ability to connect each character with the reader. Will, a former campaign worker for John Kerry’s unsuccessful 2004 presidential bid, leaves his girlfriend, Alison, stateside and settles into student life in England, which he and Alison remind themselves is only for a year. But it’s a year that challenges their relationship, as Will contemplates social barriers, financial comfort and his feelings for Sophie, a fellow Oxford student who’s involved with another man. Will also develops friendships with a diverse group: snobbish Tom, who looks down on Will for being American but becomes his closest friend; Anil, a student from Mumbai who comically embraces hip-hop but can’t mask his concise BBC accent; Timmo, whose one aspiration is to be a participant in a television reality series; chronically broke, good friend Ella, who falls for Tom; and Anneliese, a German student and talented photographer. Will’s experiences aren’t all that unique: The friends drink and party together, fall in and out of love, and support each other during difficult times and devastating losses. But Finch brings each character to life with striking effectiveness as they struggle with issues of class, the political climate, academics and their futures.
A portrait of university life that’s contemplative and nostalgic.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-01871-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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