BUDAPEST

Name: BUDAPEST
Author: Chico Buarque
ISBN: 0-8021-1782-1

by Chico Buarque & translated by Alison Entrekin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2004

Buarque has created a warm, engaging, memorable first-person voice in his credulous and well-meaning Costa, the whole...

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A seamless, delectable narrative about a ghostwriter who immerses himself in the Hungarian language, by the daring Brazilian pop lyricist and novelist (Turbulence, 1991, etc.) who’s too little known here.

Jose Costa is the unappreciated genius behind the writing services of Cunha & Costa Cultural Agency, overlooking Rio’s Copacabana Beach: he writes speeches for presidents and heads of unions and, eventually, an autobiography for a German executive, Kaspar Krabbe, that becomes a literary bestseller. But writing another’s life begins to feel like “having an affair with somebody else’s wife,” and, though he puffs up with vanity, Costa isn’t really sure who he is. After an emotionally wrenching meeting at the convention of anonymous writers’ in Melbourne, Costa gets rerouted for the night in Budapest, where he becomes intrigued by the jealously guarded way that Hungarian is spoken by the locals—and by the sweetly bitter pumpkin rolls he devours at the hotel, a food that subsequently serves as a kind of madeleine to his memory. Undervalued by his agency’s boss, and by his lovely but spoiled TV newsreader wife, who thinks he’s a hack, Costa returns to the beguiling Budapest and meets up with the woman who will serve as his muse and teacher, Kriska: “One does not learn the Magyar language from books,” she informs him point-blank, then initiates him relentlessly, sensuously, into total immersion in her language. Back and forth between Rio and Budapest goes Costa—now Zsoze Kosta—his narrative fluid as he humorously mocks, then gravely assumes his new tongue, all in preparation for his abandoning Portuguese altogether and becoming an established imposter in his adopted language.

Buarque has created a warm, engaging, memorable first-person voice in his credulous and well-meaning Costa, the whole translated here gorgeously and sinuously: sentences at random can be picked and savored for delicacy and rhythm.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-8021-1782-1

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MY GERMAN BROTHER
by Chico Buarque ; translated by Alison Entrekin

- BOOK REVIEW
TURBULENCE
by Chico Buarque

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CONCLAVE

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...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

- BOOK REVIEW
PRECIPICE
by Robert Harris

- BOOK REVIEW
ACT OF OBLIVION
by Robert Harris

- BOOK REVIEW
V2
by Robert Harris

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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.