THE MEANS

Name: THE MEANS
Author: Douglas Brunt
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7257-8

by Douglas Brunt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2014

A Machiavellian political thriller that makes Heilemann and Halperin’s nonfiction Game Change look sedate by comparison.

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A reluctant politician learns that codes of honor never survive the vicious process of electing an American president.

After flushing out the filth of Wall Street in his debut novel, Brunt (Ghosts of Manhattan, 2012) turns his attention to the seductive world of American politics. Our entree into this scene comes via Samantha Davis, an attorney who has parlayed her skills and looks into a job as the White House correspondent for UBS, a major news network. In this fiction, the U.S. is under the leadership of President Barack Obama’s successor, a bizarre and domineering Democrat named Mitchell Mason. Meanwhile, a conservative attorney named Tom Pauley is tapped by GOP leadership to take a term as governor of North Carolina and ultimately agrees to take his shot at the big job. Brunt takes his time weaving together the stories of these three players, who ultimately prove to be far more connected than they might seem. The book’s primary crisis surfaces when Samantha comes under the sway of Conner Marks, a political fixer who shares with her the crumbs of a political scandal that could send Mason’s comfortable lead tumbling down if it surfaces. As this drama unfolds, Pauley—a fiscal and social conservative with middle-class American values—finds his own beliefs crumbling under the weight of obligatory ethical concessions as Election Day draws near. There are a few well-worn tropes (the first lady’s lesbian affair joins a host of torrid liaisons that always seem to inhabit this kind of closed ecosystem), but they don't derail the narrative tension. Overall, the novel presents a well-researched portrait of the incestuous relationships between the media and Beltway power players while avoiding the broad humor of Joe Klein’s Primary Colors. Tonally, it’s much closer to Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North, which itself was memorably adapted to film as The Ides of March.

A Machiavellian political thriller that makes Heilemann and Halperin’s nonfiction Game Change look sedate by comparison.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4767-7257-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF RUDOLF DIESEL
by Douglas Brunt

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TROPHY SON
by Douglas Brunt

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GHOSTS OF MANHATTAN
by Douglas Brunt

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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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.