Moving from the sea's edge of his last novel, Signals of Distress (1995), to the wind-whipped desert of Judea, England's Crace reconfigures Christ's forty days of temptation in a mesmerizing story of spiritual quest and human failing. Musa the merchant, having fallen ill of a fever while traveling, lies an insensible mountain of flesh in his tent, abandoned by all in his caravan but his pregnant wife, who herself wishes him dead. As she digs his grave, four travelers arrive on foot—followed distantly by a fifth—to occupy nearby caves for a period of ``quarantine'': fasting and prayer in isolation. The four go straight to their refuges, but the fifth, Jesus, comes to Musa's tent for a last sip of water, and miraculously heals his host before sliding down a cliff face to a nearly inaccessible cave, bringing nothing with him but the clothes on his back. The resurrected Musa, sensing a trading opportunity, extracts rent from the others, three men and a woman, for using ``his'' caves, then barters with them daily, tempting them with small delicacies to lessen their discomfort. His main objective, however, is to talk with Jesus, the miracle-worker of whom he has only a feverish memory. But the man won't even come out of His cave despite continual pleading from the cliff above, simply throwing away Musa's enticements of food and water. His silent strength of purpose persuades the others He can do wonders for them all, but after 30 days a great wind arises, flattening Musa's tent just as he's raping the solitary woman in her cave, and the dawn brings even more dreadful news, forcing all but one to pack up and move on. A flawlessly presented tale (shortlisted for the Booker Prize) that opens a window on human aspiration and folly, its revelations full of grit and glory.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-23962-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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