A collection of witty, imaginative stories striving to be morality tales.
A journey across a fictional version of America that’s a few degrees off-kilter.
Baker’s second collection of short stories uses satire and elements of speculative fiction to grapple with the contradictions of life in modern America. The title story is about a small town that secedes from Texas and the United States and names itself “America.” Along the way, the residents fall into bickering about everything from whether capital letters represent an unfair “class system” to whether setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July makes one a traitor to America. The stories take actual social issues and amplify or distort them. In “Rites,” people are expected to choose the means of their own suicide once they are old enough to become a drain on society. The story begins with a woman dousing herself in gasoline, rowing a boat to the center of a pond, and lighting a match while her family cheers her on. Gender identity is mirrored in “The Transition,” which follows a mother struggling to accept her son's wish to leave his body and upload his consciousness to a computer. In “The Sponsor,” consumerism is satirized in a couple’s desperate attempt to secure an impressive corporate sponsor for their upcoming wedding. The writing is sharp and the scenarios are creative, yet it too often feels like the author is writing toward a thesis. For example, “Appearance” is set in a world where countless, mostly unnamed, unidentifiable people suddenly appeared throughout America. The narrator of the story is part of a family that hates the so-called “Unwanted” because they’re willing to work menial jobs for below minimum wage. The narrator and his grandfather make a habit of kidnapping local Unwanteds and dumping them across state lines. Setting aside the ickiness of comparing undocumented immigrants to identity-less zombies, the parallel to modern immigration debates is all too obvious. Baker is fascinated by modern America, and each story is an attempt to explore an important issue. However, once the reader gets the satire, the effect of the story and the collection quickly wears off.
A collection of witty, imaginative stories striving to be morality tales.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23720-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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