In forgoing the conventional pleasures of rationality and romance, Zeh’s bleak debut only greases the skids of its hero’s...
A Leipzig barrister recalls his painful relationship with a girlfriend who led him to drug-smuggling, international terrorism, and a fevered inability to live in the world she left behind.
You think you’re disillusioned? Listen to Max Cooper tell the sad tale of his old school friend Jessie’s suicide. Years ago she introduced Max and his Dusklands roommate Shershah, the estranged son of an Iranian diplomat, to her own father and brother, leading figures in a major drug-smuggling ring who in turn introduced them to cocaine. Then, just a year ago, she was back in Max’s life offering the fair-haired boy of an international legal firm in Vienna an even more potent drug: her own burning need for his life-giving support. There followed some marathon coke binges, countless rounds of exhausted recriminations, but precious few embraces, since Jessie really didn’t like Max touching her. Now that she’s shot herself in the middle of their last phone call, Max, in a frenzy of loneliness, spills the story obsessively to Clara, a phone-in radio show host who wants to mine his confessions for her university thesis in psychology. She’s got her work cut out for her, since Max’s memories come tumbling out in anything but narrative form. Flashbacks to his school days, which mingled Shershah’s idealistic promise and Jessie’s high spirits with her relatives’ menace, are tangled with horrific anecdotes of the Bosnian civil war and deepening revelations of just how much Max’s cocaine habit cost him and Jessie and a good many others. In the meantime, Max’s bargain with Clara—“my story for her entire person”—traps him between two impossible objects of desire, one of them untouchable, the other someone he wants to wash his hands after touching.
In forgoing the conventional pleasures of rationality and romance, Zeh’s bleak debut only greases the skids of its hero’s memorable descent into hell.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-86207-566-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Granta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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