Heavy-handed and belabored, the novel carries its own thematic burdens on its back.
Twenty years after this novel earned acclaim and prizes in Winterbach's (The Book of Happenstance, 2011, etc.) native South Africa, it receives its first American publication, in translation from Afrikaans.
Beginning with the title, the novel steeps itself in metaphor and allegory. It isn’t about moths, but about a young woman who studies them (her sister, tellingly enough, studies stones), as her research brings her to an isolated South African community where she seems to attract the interest of every man in town (like moths to a flame?) and generates a variety of sexual tensions. There’s a backdrop of political repression and racial strife, but the focus remains on the woman and her struggle toward self-knowledge as she comes to terms with the secrets of her past. “Karolina was researching the survival strategies of this species of moth under these extreme circumstances,” the author writes, as the reader recognizes that survival strategies might prove more thematically significant than moths. When she introduces herself to the town’s leading lawyer by saying she “studied insects,” he replies ominously, “I shudder at the thought of all you may discover here.” And discover she does, learning about the power struggles among a bunch of men who all seem to want to have carnal relations with her (though one settles for dancing), as she chooses a self-styled Buddhist who explains that “[s]uffering and false perceptions are caused by an attachment to things....Everything one clings to unduly becomes an obstacle.” While she vacillates between wanting to start over and wishing she had never been born, she develops more of a feminist consciousness concerning her sexuality, issues of power and control, and her place among all these men, as the one who warned her against attachment becomes the sort of attachment he had advised avoiding: “Love tied her down and burdened her; it beset her in a new way, it invaded her, she was like a city under siege.”
Heavy-handed and belabored, the novel carries its own thematic burdens on its back.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934824-77-1
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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