Camus meets Hamlet: a slow but meaningful examination of guilt and expiation.
Of political terror and its consequences in the Basque country of northern Spain.
Readers of a certain age may remember that, a generation or two ago, Basque nationalists were busy setting bombs in Spanish venues in an effort to gain independence. It didn’t work. Readers of any age will want to have at least some grounding in the history of the paramilitary group ETA and post-Franco Spain to appreciate the nuances of Basque author Cano’s sometimes-labored, sometimes-lumbering tale, which centers on a compatriot who, having given up two separatist friends to the Guardia Civil, now spends the next few hundred pages pondering what he’s done and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Diego Lazkano isn’t necessarily a bad guy, but in the dirty war of political oppression and assassination in which he’s implicated, everything in his life hinges on his betrayal: He wants to talk of art and philosophy, to be in love, but the world spins away from him as the reckoning draws nearer. “The dead; they are many and always grateful for a bit of entertainment,” he avers, having added to their number. His lover, Gloria, the daughter of an ardent, murderous fascist, meanwhile retreats from politics into art while nursing a deep well of anger, though her theatrical inquiry into whether torture can be “sublimated through art” speaks directly to Diego's crime. In the end, Cano’s book is a meditation on secrets and historical truth, no small issue in a Spain that is still dealing with the Civil War of the 1930s. That truth will out, as a Guardia Civil officer relates, only when the perpetrators speak up: “They say that truth always ends up coming out, and that, generally, it does so…not because of the arduous research of the person who’s been digging after it, but because the person in possession of the secret no longer wants to be its keeper.”
Camus meets Hamlet: a slow but meaningful examination of guilt and expiation.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-09146718-2-4
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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
The mother of all presidential cover-ups is the centerpiece gimmick in this far-fetched thriller from first-novelist Baldacci, a Washington-based attorney. In the dead of night, while burgling an exurban Virginia mansion, career criminal Luther Whitney is forced to conceal himself in a walk-in closet when Christine Sullivan, the lady of the house, arrives in the bedroom he's ransacking with none other than Alan Richmond, President of the US. Through the one-way mirror, Luther watches the drunken couple engage in a bout of rough sex that gets out of hand, ending only when two Secret Service men respond to the Chief Executive's cries of distress and gun down the letter-opener-wielding Christy. Gloria Russell, Richmond's vaultingly ambitious chief of staff, orders the scene rigged to look like a break-in and departs with the still befuddled President, leaving Christy's corpse to be discovered at another time. Luther makes tracks as well, though not before being spotted on the run by agents from the bodyguard detail. Aware that he's shortened his life expectancy, Luther retains trusted friend Jack Graham, a former public defender, but doesn't tell him the whole story. When Luther's slain before he can be arraigned for Christy's murder, Jack concludes he's the designated fall guy in a major scandal. Meanwhile, little Gloria (together with two Secret Service shooters) hopes to erase all tracks that might lead to the White House. But the late Luther seems to have outsmarted her in advance with recurrent demands for hush money. The body count rises as Gloria's attack dogs and Jack search for the evidence cunning Luther's left to incriminate not only a venal Alan Richmond but his homicidal deputies. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper climax provides an unsurprising answer to the question of whether a US president can get away with murder. For all its arresting premise, an overblown and tedious tale of capital sins. (Film rights to Castle Rock; Book-of-the-Month selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-51996-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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