A wonderfully humorous blend of James Bondand Don Quixote.
A patient at a mental facility who believes he is a British spy stumbles upon a villain’s far-reaching conspiracy.
James Flynn has been a patient at City of Roses Psychiatric Institute in California for 18 years, the entire time believing he is a special agent in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The Don Quixote–esque Flynn grow up watching 1960s espionage films with such obsessive zeal they overtook his identity. He meets fellow patient Chloe Jablonski, an actor involuntarily committed for a suicidal drug overdose. She maintains she was roofied and raped by powerful movie producer Gary Goldhammer. Since he believes she has proof of the crime, Goldhammer pursues her, providing Flynn with yet another reason to spring into action. As it turns out, Goldhammer is an evil, egomaniacal man who has plans, employing a new technology, “to take over the mind of every person in America.” The author deftly presents the comically implausible—and uproariously funny—as credible; Flynn is insane, disconnected from reality, and undeniably brave and resourceful. “He was built for war.” He also has a peculiar penchant for finding genuine conspiracies and thwarting them, raising questions about the very strange nature of Flynn’s psychosis. Even though the plot is riddled with the darkest themes—violence, rape, mental illness—the novel remains more comic than tragic, even downright silly, and never truly disturbing. And Flynn is a compelling protagonist, as charming as he is unhinged, a handsome man who “was built like Jean-Claude Van Damme and moved like Bruce Lee.” For those readers in search of a farcical book that is intelligently rendered, this is a delightful novel, hilarious and inventive.
A wonderfully humorous blend of James Bondand Don Quixote.Pub Date: June 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68433-967-9
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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