Bold prison tales that lack nuance.
This collection of linked short stories examines life from the perspective of a white drug dealer serving time in a state penitentiary.
Danté Allegro is a family man who lives with his wife, Lucy, and young daughter, Lola, in a cottage in the upscale community of Sausalito, California. The opening tale describes the couple preparing to meet with Danté’s father-in-law, Wally, a man in the midst of a “three-quarter life crisis,” with the intention of making a shocking revelation. After an evening of fine dining, Danté admits that his real name is Dean Davis and that he has been using an alias while selling marijuana up and down the West Coast. He also discloses that he is about to “surrender to a County Sheriff in Southern Illinois” and serve five years “with good time” in prison. The stories that follow chart Dean’s move from county jail to the state penitentiary, and explore many aspects of incarceration, with an emphasis on the eccentricities of other inmates, such as Wilbur, “who wrote bizarre stories he claimed were channeled through him by denizens of another dimension.” Luetkemeyer’s (Inside the Mind of Martin Mueller, 2018, etc.) tales are cleverly laced with literary references. A cellmate in county with a “long-suffering, sorrowful face” is called “Oh Henry” (although he admits this is on account of the candy bar rather than for the American author). A story about a work detail is titled “Slaughter House Jive,” a nod to Kurt Vonnegut. These subtleties aside, Luetkemeyer’s approach to storytelling is unflinchingly abrasive when capturing the realities of prison. One African American inmate declares: “Y’all better pucker up them butt-holes real tight cause some crazy-ass” black man “doin life gone tear off that booty in a minute!” The author is determined to examine racial and gender tensions in correctional facilities. But while some readers will appreciate the testosterone-fueled language of the prison yard, others will argue that the collection perpetuates stereotypes: “A gaggle of Gumps—gender-challenged inmates with bleached hair…sunned themselves in tailored denim short shorts.” Despite, Luetkemeyer’s self-assured visceral approach, the plot breaks little new ground in terms of revealing anything fresh about prison life.
Bold prison tales that lack nuance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Laughing Buddha Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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