Indians past and present, a disaffected Englishman, and a high-school reunion in Michigan are the unlikely parameters of this quietly comic, intensely human story, the Whitbread-winning latest from the ever-resourceful Cartwright (In Every Face I Meet, 1995, etc.). Footloose in London after being dropped by his long-term live-in and bought out by the new Japanese owners of his ad agency, Dan Silas is far from fancy-free, but new possibilities beckon in an invitation to be the guest of honor at the 30th reunion of his Michigan high school class. Although he left a few weeks after graduation, when his auto exec father was transferred back to England, and hasn’t stayed in touch, those he left behind readily remember him. Cheerleader Gloria hasn’t forgotten their first encounter in Jefferson’s bed at Monticello on their senior class trip, while his best friend Gary, the Harvard-bound brain, still regards him as a friend. But life hasn’t treated either of them kindly: Dan returns to Ford country to learn that Gloria’s daughter—the result of their Jeffersonian coupling, she claims—was the victim of a serial killer a couple of years ago, and that Gary, now Pale Eagle, believes he’s the reincarnation of an early 19th-century boy captive turned Indian visionary and has been in and out of mental institutions since he broke down at Harvard. At first Dan is a willing part of this parade of shattered lives, connecting him as it does to his youth and innocence, but when Gloria asks him to visit the killer in prison, the horror of it leaves him ready to go home. Still, when Gary also makes a request, Dan agrees, thinking it might help his friend’s recovery—and never suspecting that the result will have a lasting impact on him as well. Alive to nuances in the most casual circumstances, willfully eccentric, and charmingly resonant regarding life’s quirks on both sides of the Atlantic: a tale full of subtle surprises.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7867-0658-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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