Another worthy thriller from the Irish master novelist.
A detective and a pathologist in 1950s Ireland suspect an apparent suicide is actually a murder.
When Rosa Jacobs is found dead in a garage, it initially looks like an open-and-shut case. The body of the 27-year-old woman, a history scholar in 1950s Dublin, is discovered behind the wheel of a car, with its hood up and most of its windows closed, a hose connecting the exhaust pipe to a gap in the driver’s side window. DI St. John Strafford is assigned to the case, as is Dr. Quirke, a pathologist who doubts that the case is a suicide—he noticed marks on Rosa’s mouth, which he thinks points to her having been gagged and anesthetized before being put in the running car. The two men’s investigation leads them to a German family that Rosa knew; they hear rumors that Rosa was romantically involved with one member, Frank. (The idea that Rosa, who was Jewish, would befriend Germans so soon after World War II strikes many involved in the case as odd.) The plot thickens as the investigators discover that a friend of Rosa’s from Tel Aviv has been killed by a hit-and-run driver. Throughout the novel, the difficult relationship between Strafford and Quirke is explored; Quirke’s wife was shot to death in Spain some time before, and Strafford killed her killer. Quirke turned to alcohol after his wife’s murder, and his personality has become unpredictable: “Quirke’s mere presence in a room had an incendiary effect. He was like phosphorus, that burns in air.” This novel succeeds on the considerable strength of its characters, especially the quicksilver Quirke and the quiet Strafford. The prose and dialogue are stellar, as one would expect from the Booker Prize–winning Banville, and the ending comes as a complete shock. Banville has written several novels featuring Quirke, mostly under the pen name Benjamin Black; this one is a worthy addition to that series.
Another worthy thriller from the Irish master novelist.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781335449634
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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