Simpson’s stories pack a quiet emotional power that extends beyond their pages.
Time is the essence of this spare, subtle short story collection.
Two middle-aged women, friends from high school who haven’t seen each other for years, ride the train together from central London to the end of the line to recover a lost pair of reading glasses and, along with them, their old, easy friendship and spontaneous sense of adventure. A long-married couple, their relationship buffeted by bitterness and betrayal, find themselves the youngest travelers on a package tour to see Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in Berlin and, as the shared experience crumbles the emotional wall between them built by entrenched grudges and fears, find their way back to each other as old age approaches. A prosperous lawyer in London’s financial district—on his second marriage, to a woman around the age of the daughters from his first marriage—takes the teenage son of an acquaintance to lunch to persuade him that law would be a wise course of study, yet, as the lawyer reflects back on the course of his own life, his choices, and their consequences, its wisdom seems less clear. The nine stories in Simpson's (In-Flight Entertainment, 2012, etc.) sharply written collection carry titles that reflect a sense of place (“Moscow,” “Arizona,” “Berlin,” etc.). But, perhaps to a greater degree, the stories concern time—the effects of its passage, the disappointments it brings, the opportunities for growth it offers. Too, they grapple with issues of gender—especially incisively in the sly, clever “Erewhon”—and touch on the topics of art, literature, and economic and social inequality. And although Simpson’s stories are timely and rooted in their British milieu—strongly evoking the personal and cultural struggles of today’s middle class—they are also far-reaching and timeless, addressing matters of loyalty and mortality that are universal and deeply human.
Simpson’s stories pack a quiet emotional power that extends beyond their pages.Pub Date: June 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-451-49307-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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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