Probably the most enjoyable comic novel since Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. A certifiable hoot.
If you don’t laugh yourself sick over this gloriously absurd new novel from the author of 1994’s Louisiana Power & Light (to which it’s a partial sequel), you’re probably just plain unentertainable.
It’s Dufresne’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in the Louisiana swamp country, where the inhabitants of Shiver-de-Freeze (a place-name mangled from the original French) are getting themselves ready for the wedding of Ariane Thevenot and Grisham Loudermilk. Things get complicated right away, because devilishly handsome Grisham can’t deny himself one more fling (if not several) with former girlfriend Miranda Ferry (who works as a “chicken-sexer”: don’t ask), and Ariane can’t resist the adoration of impulsive Adlai Birdsong. Meanwhile, good-looking widow Earlene Fontana considers the attentions of morose Varden Roebuck, occasionally thinking to fret about her precocious 11-year-old Boudou, who can’t decide whether to deliver up his superhuman memory for scrutiny at a nearby scientific institute, or his virginity to the female “conjoined” twins known as “Tous-les-Deux,” who have eyes (and other shared body parts) for him. These are all basically likable folks: not just the aforementioned, but even hypocritical souls like sex-obsessed Father Pat and born-again Durwood Tulliver and hellfire-and-damnation preacher Alvin Lee Loudermilk, as well as miscellaneous gossips and rednecks and snake-handlers. Grisham and Ariane do swap vows, and their ceremonials include the performance of a hilariously deranged playlet, Evangeline, as Performed by the Mechanics of Shiver-de-freeze (oh, and there’s a werewolf in it). And when Dufresne wraps everything up, the metafictionist in him (who’s been chatting with the reader at odd intervals throughout the book) takes several peeks at his characters’ futures, in a garrulous Epilogue and a mock-scholarly Appendix. You’ll be pleased to hear that Boudou’s formidable brains get put to good use.
Probably the most enjoyable comic novel since Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. A certifiable hoot.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-02020-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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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