An intriguing antihero’s perspective on his life and times.
A Korean War deserter tries to start over in a rapidly changing Florida in this novel.
Philip Narby doesn’t remember who he was. In an earlier lifetime, he was a behind-the-scenes paper-pusher in Occupied Japan. But he learned things he shouldn’t have about the illegal activities of the powers that be. For that, he got tortured and then sent to the front lines of the Korean War, where he was gravely injured. A military black marketeer used him as a mule for his ill-gotten gains and helped Narby flee to Cuba. Early on in the tale, the drug-addled Narby escapes Havana by boat when the people start turning against dictator Fulgencio Batista, and crashes ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast, with thousands of stolen dollars in a rucksack. He’s accompanied by a young, idealistic medical student, through whom he funnels aid to Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries. Narby also invests in land in the region, building a primitive fortress in the jungle. He falls in lust with an abstract artist living in a nearby colony of the wintering wealthy. He also falls under the spell of jazz, even running a club in Miami’s black Overtown section. But Narby is really stuck between the worlds of the powerful and the faceless masses: “There were only two sides, now and forevermore: them, the jackals with generals’ stars, and the Harvard-suckled backstabbers and assassins, and us, the men who didn't matter, fodder left to rot in the swamps and the jungles and the shit-water ditches.” Narby’s adventures are a warped version of the American Dream, as he uses stolen funds to build a better life for himself and others. Yet he can’t enjoy it because his paranoia has him continually looking over his shoulder. Weisberg’s (Chronicles of Disorder, 2000) narrative is much like the protagonist’s life: while time passes quickly, significant events for Narby happen only occasionally. His indolent lifestyle wears thin over 600 pages. Furthermore, there are few characters worth rooting for. Narby means well, but his venomous thoughts and substance abuse bring him down. Still, it’s engrossing to watch one man founder in the midst of a turbulent period of history.
An intriguing antihero’s perspective on his life and times.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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