Goldman's acclaimed debut, The Long Night of the White Chickens (1992), proves to have been no fluke: Its successor is an equally compelling saga of a crew of poor, would-be Central American sailors stranded aboard the rat-infested hulk of a dead ship. Esteban, a 19-year-old survivor of a Sandinista battalion shot to pieces in a contra ambush, flies to New York as part of a group of hopeful, desperate strangers hoping to take seamens' berths on the cargo ship Urus. On arrival, the crew is shocked to see their vessel stripped and sagging along an abandoned Brooklyn pier, its engine room a blackened disaster from a fire at sea on its last voyage. Despite appearances, the yanqui Captain and his non- Spanish-speaking mate are insistent that the Urus will be rebuilt, and they quickly set the crew to work. Summer fades into chilly fall, however, and it becomes obvious to the seamen that not only will the ship never become seaworthy, but they will never be paid; with no cash and no legal status, they're trapped in a floating nightmare. Already ill-clothed and -fed, their despair proves as numbing as the autumn winds, until Esteban begins to explore the area's warehouses, bringing back whatever he can steal. His forays lead him to a Latino neighborhood, where he finds sympathy, a job, and even a girl. He helps the others as best he can, insisting that a friend suffering from a bad burn be taken to the hospital (and he is, never to be heard from again); and when the crew's plight finally attracts official notice, Esteban again takes matters into his own hands. A bizarre set of circumstances (inspired by a true story) vividly wrought, but even more memorable is Goldman's fresh and moving take on such matters as longing, love, cruelty, and fellowship, probed in a poignant and original narrative. (First printing of 35,000; $50,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-87113-671-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
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
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
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