Rejected by more than a dozen publishers in 1977, this non-suspense novel by thriller-man Leonard now—thanks to his current hot-property status—makes its way into print. And, though delivered with leanly ironic narration and zip-lock dialogue, it's weak stuff indeed: a thin, unfocused replay of the familiar scenario (cf. Morris West, Irving Wallace, et al.) involving a contemporary religious miracle and its subsequent exploitation. Charlie Lawson—a.k.a. Brother Juvenal, a former Franciscan monk, age 33 (of course), now working for the Church's alcoholism rehab center in Detroit—has miraculous healing powers: when he touches the ill, he cures them—while blood spouts from his body at the five stigmata spots of Christ's wounds. Juvenal, a total innocent, is reticent (if unfazed and accepting) about all this. But a Catholic traditionalist movement (led by a racist, sexually repressed psycho-fanatic) tries to use Juvenal as a PR-weapon in the battle against Vatican-II reforms. Meanwhile, too, religion huckster Bill Hill plots to make big bucks off Juvenal, booking him (for $1 million) onto a Tom Snyder-ish TV talk-show. And Hill's reluctant sidekick, cynical PR-woman Lynn Faulkner, is transformed as she falls utterly in love with virginal Juvenal—who joyfully reciprocates, discoverings the joys of true romance and tender sex. ("I bleed from five wounds and heal people, but I've never been in love. Isn't that something?") Leonard's lively, gritty talent—individual scenes flare with lowdown atmosphere—can't disguise the overall sketchiness here: undeveloped drama, unconvincing characters. The tone wanders fuzzily from theological soap opera to black comedy to sitcom farce—especially in the limp finale: Juvenal's TV appearance, during which he heals the right-wing Catholic fanatic (injured while trying to murder Lynn). And the result is sporadically diverting but unsatisfying all around—too offhand (or simple-minded) for the religious-fiction audience, too feebly fanciful for Leonard's usual readership.
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1987
ISBN: 0060089598
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Arbor House
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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