bookshelf

THE COUP

Name: THE COUP
Author: John Updike
ISBN: 0449242595

by John Updike ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 7, 1978

bookshelf

Updike's long interest in African literature was bound to up and produce something like this eventually. Hakim Felix Ellellou, college-educated in Wisconsin, is the dictator of Kush (called Noire when it was French), a sub-Saharan dustbowl of such proportions that even the government doesn't know what's going on in some of the distanter reaches. By dint of a cleverly deduced belief in government-by-mythology, Ellellou rules quite nicely, thank you; things are kept under control by Islam, a Russian-cozy socialism (the Soviets have got a secret missile base planted in the drought-parched, famine-reeling north), and Ellellou's penchant for incognito tours of the country. When the Americans try sending in food aid (Kix, Total, and other junk cereals), Ellellou has the stuff burned. But the Americans are not so easily daunted; a deal for oil-leasing rights is secretly being negotiated by Ellellou's second-in-command, a technocrat with one eye on the World Bank. And suddenly there are signs—like rock music, jeans, Women's Lib, and MacDonalds—that speak of change for Kush. This being Updike, all the Africana fits tight as a glove, well-researched and intellectually digested. (The Africans, for instance, speak in an excruciatingly rhetorical style, counterpointed by the hilarious folksiness of the Americans, one of whom is Candace, Ellellou's third wife of four, whom he met in Wisconsin and brought home.) The general play of intelligence over this novel's surfaces is exquisite; the wry, moralistic denouement—America wins, but what?—is combed into lots of smart political, sociological, or economic opinions. But Updike is not basically a comic writer—comedy makes him tighten his grip and get manically inventive and crabbed; so whole sections here are as hard as walnuts to get through. As intellectual tour de force, The Coup scores fairly well. As serious work, even serious comedy, it never invites any species of emotional involvement—and never straightens out its curlicues enough to hit home.

Pub Date: Dec. 7, 1978

ISBN: 0449242595

Page Count: 324

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1978

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALWAYS LOOKING
by John Updike edited by Christopher Carduff

- BOOK REVIEW
HIGHER GOSSIP
by John Updike edited by Christopher Carduff

- BOOK REVIEW
MY FATHER’S TEARS
by John Updike

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.