Much to admire, though feathers may be ruffled (how can “gumbo” be a unifying image for a race that has gone far beyond the...
Seventy-one African-American writers donate their talent to benefit the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
Veteran editor Golden (The Edge of Heaven, 1998, etc.), president and founding director of Hurston/Wright, writes that “The African American writer has, of necessity, been visionary and witness, a channel for an individual sense of story even while recognizing that for Black people in America, writing is fighting.” Although many, if not all, other races would argue that writing is fighting for them as well, Golden is still right. But if in a collection benefiting the foundation named for Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston you think you might get to read works by them, think again. They’re missing, as are Toni Morrison, James McPherson, and Charles Johnson—in fact, a list of prominent writers who are absent may be more impressive than one of those present. But not to worry: both of the editors, Golden and Harris (Not a Day Goes By, 2000), are represented. A sampling of these sometimes new, sometimes previously published tales also includes Edwidge Danticat’s “The Dew Breaker,” about an immigrant family who attends Christmas Eve mass but finds America wasteful, faithless, and full of unlikely coincidence; in David Haynes’ “Your Child can be a Model,” we meet a young black mother on the occasion of her son’s expulsion from school, then follow her as she works to get him out of trouble; John Edgar Wideman, in “Weight,” straddles the line between fiction and nonfiction in a poignant homage to his mother; Tayari Jones contributes a section from her recently published novel, Leaving Atlanta (p. 830), about a series of murders of African-American children in Georgia; and voice rules in J. California Cooper’s “$100 and Nothing!,” a neighbor’s account of a good marriage gone bad.
Much to admire, though feathers may be ruffled (how can “gumbo” be a unifying image for a race that has gone far beyond the cultural reach of it or any other individual thing?). Still, a comprehensive look at middle-brow African-American literature.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-7679-1041-9
Page Count: 832
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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