WOKE UP LONELY

Name: WOKE UP LONELY
Author: Fiona Maazel
ISBN: 978-1-55597-638-5

by Fiona Maazel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2013

Maazel manages to strike a number of tones here—from poignant (all Lo wants is to get back with wife and daughter) to...

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In this rollicking ride of a novel, Maazel explores a world of family, fame and forgiveness.

One of the cures for “waking up lonely” is the Helix, sponsor of a number of services geared to help the legion of people experiencing loneliness in the 21st century. The founder of the Helix is Thurlow “Lo” Dan, whose mission has been to help those who feel companionless, though ironically, he’s been feeling forsaken and isolated himself since the breakup of his marriage to Esme and his separation from his daughter, Ida. In one hilarious scene we learn of the Helix’s strategy of “speed dating,” in which potential partners come together for a few minutes to share a brief piece of who they are (responding to contrived prompts such as “My worst high school moment”) in hopes of establishing a more lasting relationship. Despite such artificiality, the Helix has become something of a cult and is now drawing worldwide attention. Esme has been spying on Thurlow and comes up with a recon mission that, to say the least, devolves into a fiasco. In fact, he turns the tables on the motley group of operatives Esme has put together. In a number of touching flashbacks, we learn of the development of Lo and Esme’s relationship. The narrative moves readers seamlessly from such unlikely places as the Helix’s corporate headquarters in Cincinnati to the bleakness of North Korea.

Maazel manages to strike a number of tones here—from poignant (all Lo wants is to get back with wife and daughter) to paranoid—and she’s successful at every level.

Pub Date: April 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-55597-638-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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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.