Like many “literary” authors before her, Shigekuni borrows genre-fiction tropes without knowing how to make them work.
A thriller that takes the reader from academia in Los Angeles to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
Daidai is taking a leave of absence as a museum curator while she’s trying to conceive. Her husband, Hiroshi, continues to work as a professor. At a party for graduate students, Daidai meets Satsuki, who has just arrived in Los Angeles. Even though she’s convinced that Satsuki is interested in her husband, Daidai is, herself, seduced by this beguiling woman. Satsuki is both a fascinating distraction and a chance to connect with Japanese culture—which is something Daidai, a Japanese-American woman raised in the United States, craves. But a death at a local Catholic monastery makes her wonder what she really knows about her new friend. Psychological thrillers often rely on a disconnect between a protagonist’s ordinary life and the extraordinary circumstances in which she finds herself. Bored and frustrated, Daidai is perfectly situated both to fall for a charismatic stranger and to become obsessed with her secrets. But Shigekuni’s (Unending Nora, 2008, etc.) writing flattens the contrast between Daidai’s reality before and after Satsuki. Descriptions of setting and action tend to be vague to the point of opacity. For example, very early in the novel, Daidai has an encounter with a strange man while shopping for groceries in Little Tokyo. She's so startled when he speaks to her that she makes him stumble, and their interaction, apparently, causes a tear in the heavy bag of rice she’s carrying. But there’s no obvious moment of impact; physical contact is mostly implied. It’s difficult to visualize what actually happens during this encounter. Emotional states and relationships are equally hard to divine. The stranger she meets in Little Tokyo is still carrying the torn bag of rice when Daidai runs into the little brother of the friend she’s planning to meet for lunch. There are suggestions that she finds him attractive, but there’s no way to understand how important this information is. These are not isolated incidents but, rather, indicative of the novel’s style throughout. This leaves the reader feeling off-kilter from the start, which diminishes the impact of real mystery entering Daidai’s life. Satsuki would be more compellingly enigmatic if there weren’t so many gaps and elisions in Shigekuni’s worldbuilding and character development.
Like many “literary” authors before her, Shigekuni borrows genre-fiction tropes without knowing how to make them work.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-939419-98-9
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
