MONSTRUARY

Name: MONSTRUARY
Author: Julián Ríos
ISBN: 0-375-40823-1

by Julián Ríos & translated by Edith Grossman ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2001

So much fun to read that you may not notice how remarkably inventive and suggestive it is. Ríos is an authentic enchanter.

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Another pun-derful literary extravaganza from the brilliant Spaniard making a name for himself as a contemporary equivalent of Joyce, Nabokov, and German experimentalist Arno Schmidt.

This time, Ríos takes a many-angled look at the career and psyche of eccentric artist Victor Mons (whose surname suggests both lofty eminence and pudendal earthiness). As the story begins, Mons is in the hospital, having landed there after a breakdown—one in which he impulsively destroyed a series of paintings he called his "Monstruary": images of the great monsters of antiquity and legend, literature and cinema, created to represent "the erotic scenes, models, lovers, and fetishes of his life and art." Mons's vacillations are observed and reported by acolytes and associates (as well as by himself). Most prominent of these is his cataloguer and friend Emil Alia, who also appeared in Larva (1990, not reviewed) and Loves That Bind (1998). What emerges from this babel of voices is a fragmented and funny portrait of the artist as both "monster" and genius-visionary, juxtaposed with crisp portrayals of such fetching characters as Mons's "night-errant model" and mistress, Eva Lalka, who adores the books of her Polish countryman Witold Gombrowicz; vaguely sinister "Joycentric" literary scholar Frank N. Reck; and Flaubert characters Bouvard and Pécuchet, now peddling their pseudointellectual wares on the Internet. It sounds forbidding but is actually very entertaining, thanks largely to the magnificent work of translator Grossman: a celebration—and appropriation—of lives and books (Henry James, Pierre Loti, Paul Cézanne, and Joyce himself are evoked here and there) that deftly illustrates the truth of Flaubert's dictum that "in literature nothing is really begun and nothing ended . . . everything is transformed and continued." And who but Ríos would think of using the image of the Gorgon in an ad for Gorgonzola cheese?

So much fun to read that you may not notice how remarkably inventive and suggestive it is. Ríos is an authentic enchanter.

Pub Date: March 16, 2001

ISBN: 0-375-40823-1

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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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...

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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

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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.