Eggers turns this novel’s contrivances into an asset, though overall it feels more like a series of philosophy-symposium...
A man takes a bunch of hostages for the sake of some robust, moderately unhinged conversation about ethics in Eggers’ latest big-issue novel.
With A Hologram for the King (2012), Eggers began diligently feeling his way toward a form for a moral novel that would address 21st-century economics and politics. The results have been hit or miss: Hologram was an impressive Hemingway-esque study of the alienation that rapid high-tech expansion sows, while The Circle (2013) was a sodden and didactic jeremiad about social media’s capacity to chisel away at our privacy. His new novel is similarly message-laden but, since it’s brief and told exclusively in dialogue, doesn’t wear out its welcome. Thomas, the novel’s antihero, has kidnapped a number of people and shackled them in separate buildings on a decommissioned California Army base; among them are an astronaut he knew in college, a Vietnam-vet congressman, a grade school teacher, his mother and a police officer. Thomas is clearly unstable, but the discussions that spill out address legitimate real-world concerns. Why are governments more adept at financing war than education? Where is the line between inappropriate and criminal behavior, and who decides? How much of our capacity to navigate the world is predetermined, and how much of it is a function of experience? The deliberately unrealistic structure carries the faint echo of Plato’s dialogues, though Eggers is careful to keep the tone relatively casual. (Like many fictional madmen, Thomas is frightening, but he holds your attention.) Over the course of the handful of days the novel covers, Thomas becomes more delusional, but also more revealing of a critical incident in this life, which gives the closing pages some needed drama while raising questions about the appropriate relationship between authority and compassion.
Eggers turns this novel’s contrivances into an asset, though overall it feels more like a series of philosophy-symposium prompts than a full-fledged story.Pub Date: June 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-101-87419-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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