Though this novel is notably darker than his other books, Barry still finds a smirking and at times uproarious way to expose...
A timid scientist becomes a military-grade bionic man in the latest corporate satire from Barry (Jennifer Government, 2003, etc.).
When we meet Charlie, the hero of the author’s fourth novel, he’s desperate to find the cell phone he’s misplaced. He spots it soon enough in one of his employer’s laboratories—he’s an industrial engineer at a corporation called Better Future—but pays a terrible price when he loses a leg in a heavy-duty clamp as he tries to retrieve it. The lesson ought to be that we should take care how attached we get to our gadgets, but Charlie’s takeaway is precisely the opposite; astounded at the progress made in prosthetic design and inspired with his own ideas to improve his artificial leg, he becomes convinced that technology can almost universally improve on flesh-and-blood anatomy. His doctors are aghast—especially when Charlie intentionally cuts off his other leg in the clamp—but he has a supporter in Lola, a prosthetics expert who becomes his love interest, and in his employers, who see lucrative military contracts in his creations. As in his previous novels, Barry takes scenarios that ought to be tragic and cannily reshapes them into smart, piercing comedy about contemporary workaday life. Here the target is both corporate greed and technological obsession, though this time the humor grows bleaker and more grotesque—Barry nervily explores how much of the body can be mechanized, right down to heartbeats and synapses. A love story emerges, as does a kind of ersatz superhero plot where Charlie battles a rival rigged with similar prostheses. But the author takes care to return to the central question of how much of our humanity we’re willing to sacrifice for technology, and how much we already have.
Though this novel is notably darker than his other books, Barry still finds a smirking and at times uproarious way to expose our endless obsession with technological fixes.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-47689-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
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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