Unabashedly conventional horror tales with an understated but remarkable lead character.
Taylor’s (Pineapple, 2017, etc.) collection of linked short stories features a recurring protagonist who has a series of spooky encounters.
Kentucky is evidently a hub for spirit activity. At least, that seems to be the case for this book’s narrator, whose real name no character ever utters. In the opening tale, “Galen’s Mountain Child,” he’s only 10 years old when he and his older friend Galen search for a ghost that appears to be periodically calling out for help. In “Hey-hello/hey-goodbye/hey-weep-no-more,” Galen warns the teenage narrator of two high schoolers who had a fatal car accident about 20 years ago on prom night. Since then, 13 kids have died in similar accidents in that same allegedly wraith-cursed spot. The entries in this collection are chronological, unfolding during the 1960s and ’70s. The narrator eventually attends the University of Kentucky and works at the campus bookstore. While at UK, he sees apparitions in the stories “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Louie, Louie and the Blonde Hippie”; in the latter tale, he has the chance to thwart a potential serial killer. Not every story, however, has a ghost. In “Angel’s Wings,” the narrator hears voices on his staticky crystal radio, including Galen’s, who’s currently away in the Navy. Likewise, “Faithful Companion” is a humorous tale of his blind date, which heats up at a dentist’s office after hours. But the comedy is gleefully dark: When the dentist unexpectedly shows up, the narrator must hide in a closet—with a skeleton. Taylor primarily takes the traditional route with his horrorcentric tales. One of the collection’s tales, “The Perfect Ghost Story, Plus One,” addresses narrative tropes in ghost stories. A character lists conventions in a tale she relates to the narrator: “Mine is a legitimate ghost story, complete with doll motif, haunted house…mood, moral, warnings, turning point, and climax.” The author’s book is likewise filled with familiar horror imagery: There’s a string of creepy dolls in “I Am the Egg,” and the narrator investigates a haunted house in “Ms. Sylvia’s Home Cure.” There is, however, occasional repetition, such as several characters’ dying in car wrecks and the narrator’s experiencing plot-turning visions (often of someone who’s dead). But Taylor excels at establishing unnerving moods: At a séance in “Tacete,” the narrator recounts, “The hairs on my neck and forearm did a tiny dance. It was as if a gentle overhead air-conditioning had just started up.” The author’s greatest triumph is his protagonist. Even nameless, the narrator is distinctive. Readers, over the course of the stories, watch him move from a Catholic boarding school to college and endure such adolescent woes as his persistent virginity. Galen is equally diverting: Though his relationships with women rarely last, he has a soft spot for Louie, Louie, the Labrador mix he adopts. Throughout, Taylor has fun avoiding the narrator’s moniker: hobby-shop owner Max Howard of “I am the Egg” sifts through a handful of incorrect names while Sylvia simply calls him Bookstore.
Unabashedly conventional horror tales with an understated but remarkable lead character.Pub Date: June 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944697-75-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
