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ANIMAL CRACKERS

Name: ANIMAL CRACKERS
Author: Hannah Tinti
ISBN: 0-385-33743-4

STORIES

by Hannah Tinti ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2004

The clearly talented Tinti isn’t afraid to take risks, but sometimes she pushes her artfulness a bit too self-consciously.

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As the title suggests, animals are the connecting motif among the 11 stories here, though newcomer Tinti’s real concern lies with damaged human beings.

In the title piece, an elephant keeper tempts fate by placing his head under the foot of his elephant—because of his own experience as victim and victimizer. The dog that appears in “Home Sweet Home,” sniffing around a dead body, belongs to a murderess who not only kills her husband’s mistress but also gets custody of her stepson, who has been unloved by his father. The pain of an absent or abusive father is frequently the underlying theme. In “Talk Turkey,” the most involving story here, three unhappy preteen boys run away from home. After an accident on the road, the two with fathers, however imperfect, are rescued by said fathers and pick up their lives; the youngster being raised by his single mother is left behind, never heard from again. The zoo diorama restorer who feels stalked by a stuffed bear in “Preservation” is coming to grips with the impending death of her father, a famous artist but negligent parent. The same bear appears in “Hit Man of the Year,” where it becomes a weapon used by a mob killer whose character is defined by his fatherless status and resulting lack of love. Tinti’s animals are seldom more that props or metaphors for what’s going on within her human characters; an exception is “Reasonable Terms,” in which zoo animals go on strike. The two most brutal tales, “Slim’s Last Ride” and “Bloodworks,” involve children whose attacks on animals are particularly vicious. “Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus” comes as a refreshing finale: the heroine, abandoned by her father but followed by his hired detectives, escapes into the African jungle, becomes an explorer of mythic proportions, and has a monkey named after her.

The clearly talented Tinti isn’t afraid to take risks, but sometimes she pushes her artfulness a bit too self-consciously.

Pub Date: March 2, 2004

ISBN: 0-385-33743-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | SHORT STORIES

- BOOK REVIEW
YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS
by Adina Talve-Goodman ; edited by Sarika Talve-Goodman & Hannah Tinti

- BOOK REVIEW
SMALL ODYSSEYS
edited by Hannah Tinti

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY
by Hannah Tinti

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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.