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GO WITH ME

Name: GO WITH ME
Author: Jr. Freeman
ISBN: 978-1-58642-139-7

by Jr. Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2008

If all novels were this good, Americans would read more.

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A small masterpiece of black comedy and suspense about a trio of backwoods heroes who embark upon a modern-day quest.

Covering 24 hours, set in small-town Vermont, the novel begins and ends with a certain New England ennui, but what fills the in-between is an absorbing tale of toppling the giant of the woods. The day begins with Lillian sitting in her car, a paring knife in her lap, her dead cat in the passenger seat. Waiting for the sheriff, she wants to lodge a complaint against Blackway, a notorious thug who has been stalking her, and most recently offed fluffy Annabelle. Sheriff Wingate says he can’t help without proof (he’s strictly by the book), but maybe she should talk to some men at the old mill to see what they can do. Mill owner Whizzer sends Lillian off with Nate the Great, a large young man with more brawn than brains, and Lester Speed, an old-timer whose bag full of tricks will resolve Lillian’s problems. While the three track down their man (against Nate’s steady refrain: “I ain’t afraid of Blackway” and Lester’s vague plan to defeat a notorious outlaw), Whizzer and his gang of loafers sit in the mill office (one suspects this is a daily occurrence) and drink beer, philosophize and fill in some of the backstory about Lillian, Lester and Nate. Whizzer and the boys are beautifully nuanced, familiar and original, as they happily pontificate about nothing much. Meanwhile, our heroes, a few steps behind Blackway, find themselves at a trashy motel, in a windowless bar (where a man loses an ear thanks to Lester’s quick wrist) and finally in a forest, where they plan to confront Blackway at his converted bus. His novel a loose rendering of a King Arthur tale, Freeman (My Life and Adventures, 2002, etc.) builds a sense of otherworldly menace around Blackway, part petty-crook, part bogeyman. It seems all but impossible that an unarmed woman, a hulking youth and a limping old man could slay this beast.

If all novels were this good, Americans would read more.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-58642-139-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Steerforth

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

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

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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.