Portentous and didactic.
The latest from Pulitzer Prize finalist Hogan (English/Univ. of Colorado; Power, 1998, etc.) revolves around two Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest as they struggle to reconcile the tribe’s time-honored ways with those of the corrupt wider world.
Thomas Just and Ruth Small seem destined for each other. His grandfather is Witka, legendary hunter-seer who in times of need disappeared into the depths and “spoke with the whales, entreated them, and asked […] if one of them would offer itself to the poor people on land.” Ruth, meanwhile, is born with gill slits and kept briefly in a zinc tub so she won’t “drown in air.” But soon after they’re married in a tribal ceremony, Thomas—on a bender with friends—impulsively enlists and ships off to Vietnam, leaving behind not only Ruth but, it turns out, the son she’s pregnant with. Horrified by what he witnesses in war, Thomas melts into the landscape of Vietnam, where he lives ten years as a rice farmer, even fathering a daughter. He returns to the States—but not home, not yet. After a sojourn in Hawaii, he hears the tribe is to embark on a whale hunt. Ostensibly a reassertion of traditional values, it’s actually a cynical scheme, with the whale oil promised to profiteers; this whale will be not entreated but slaughtered. Thomas takes part in the hunt, during which his estranged son is murdered. (Gifted with some of his great-grandfather’s ability, Marco tries to dissuade his fellows from killing a whale too small and timid, and pays with his life.) Thomas withdraws to taciturn solitude in his grandfather’s house, and Ruth courageously tries to punish the wrongdoers and uphold the old ways. Hogan excels, early on, in laying out tribal lore, and the book nicely exemplifies the difficulty of maintaining A’atsika values in a world grown smaller, more venal, more violent. But the abstract, preachy voice palls, and Thomas remains elusive, more symbol than person.
Portentous and didactic.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-393-06457-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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