AVENUE OF MYSTERIES

Name: AVENUE OF MYSTERIES
Author: John Irving
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6416-4

by John Irving ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 2015

Though not as irresistible as early works such as The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, a welcome return...

bookshelf

Sex, drugs, and mariachi: Irving’s (In One Person, 2013, etc.) latest ventures south of the border and then back again, tracing the long road and unforeseeable turns that we travel in this world.

The sex is constant—at least the desire for it is. (“Juan Diego had noticed that Miriam’s breasts were also attractive, though her nipples were not visible through her sweater.”) The drugs: well, do Lopressor and Viagra count? And as for the mariachi, it’s the soundtrack to a long dream in which “it was impossible to tell where the music came from.” When you come to think of it, life itself is pretty much an avenue of mysteries, though, per Irving, not without its comedy in the midst of tragedy and disappointment. Juan Diego, whose very name invokes the first saint of the Americas, has had an eventful journey over half a century from the landfills of Guerrero to Iowa and literary renown; now an accomplished writer, he nears the end of that journey in a faraway city, drifting in and out of a long dream in which he retraces his steps. Or, perhaps, a step and a limp, for, in good Greek tragic mode, Juan Diego nurses a crushed foot that reminds him of the receding past with every ache. Now in Manila, a place that shares the English and Spanish halves of Juan Diego’s self but adds its own exotic element, Juan Diego confronts his mortality while puzzling out questions of a theological and much more earthly nature: the mother-and-daughter team that he lusts for over 500-odd pages, for instance, may be more than ordinary mortals, just as everyone Juan Diego has met may be angels or devils in disguise. Irving works his familiar themes—Catholicism, sex, death—with a light and assured touch, and though the dream-narrative construct is a little shelf-worn, it serves the story well.

Though not as irresistible as early works such as The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, a welcome return to form.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4516-6416-4

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAST CHAIRLIFT
by John Irving

- BOOK REVIEW
IN ONE PERSON
by John Irving

- BOOK REVIEW
LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER
by John Irving

bookshelf

CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

bookshelf

Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

- BOOK REVIEW
PRECIPICE
by Robert Harris

- BOOK REVIEW
ACT OF OBLIVION
by Robert Harris

- BOOK REVIEW
V2
by Robert Harris

bookshelf

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

bookshelf

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.