A warm, witty two-hander that sidesteps the clichés of art school and indie film and treats its free spirits with respect.
The irrepressible Wilson presents a grunge-era fable about a pre-internet mass-hysteria incident and the alchemy of art.
Family dramas and short stories are the author’s sweet spots, but for this emotionally acute peek into the inner life of the artist, he’s turned to the uncomfortable exile of adolescence. Coalfield, Tennessee, circa 1996 is as remote (and boring) as any rural American outpost, so budding teen writer Frances "Frankie" Budge is intrigued when Zeke, a strange boy from Memphis, shows up at the public pool. “This town is weird,” the stranger observes. “It’s like a bomb was dropped on it, and you guys are just getting back to normal.” In the grip of summer’s dog days, Frankie and Zeke pursue their artistic outlets elbow to elbow, hers the written word, his visual arts. Joining forces, they make a poster emblazoned with a throwaway couplet about outlaws on the run: "The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us." Soon, they commandeer an old copy machine and plaster the town with their anonymous manifesto, punctuated by inevitable adolescent canoodling. What follows is a rough approximation of the “Satanic panic” of the Reagan-era 1980s, as the media labels the work “troubling street art” before it snowballs into a national hysteria that fortunately exists mostly on the periphery here. Wilson ignores the low-hanging fruit—Frankie and Zeke’s relationship is fundamentally a coming-of-age tale, but not in the way you might think. Instead, he focuses on the wonderful, terrible, transformative power of art. The catalyst for Frankie’s reluctant confession, 20 years later, is a visit from a New Yorker art critic convinced that Frankie wrote the infamous, trouble-causing line. In a world where art is often dismissed, Frankie will learn whether the line she created still holds the power she'd thought long since lost.
A warm, witty two-hander that sidesteps the clichés of art school and indie film and treats its free spirits with respect.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-291350-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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
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