SNOW

Name: SNOW
Author: Maxence Fermine
ISBN: 0-7434-5684-X

by Maxence Fermine & translated by Chris Mulhern ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2003

Crystalline and spare, this tale nevertheless packs substantial heat in its passionate embrace of youthful ideals and...

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A romantic story etched as delicately as frost on a windowpane, this French bestseller from 1999 about a young Japanese poet’s path to wisdom is Fermine’s lyrical US debut.

At 17, near the end of the 19th century, Yuko has gone into the mountains of his native Hokkaido for inspiration and returned to his monk father with the decision that he will devote his life to writing haiku. Forced by his father to reconsider, he returns to the wilderness in winter and comes back determined to write only about snow. This Yuko does for several years, using the most ethereal of poetic forms to extol the virtues of that most ethereal of elements; then one day the Imperial Poet comes to call, having caught wind of this young purist. The Poet is impressed, but he’s also struck by the whiteness in Yuko’s poems and urges Yuko to find color. Two years later—during this interval, Yuko discovers the sensual delights of lovemaking—the Poet returns, this time with a mysterious young woman to offer the snowbound youth training at the hands of the Poet’s own aged mentor, Soseki. Yuko agrees, and walks south to find the old man; enroute, he discovers a beautiful European woman frozen in the ice high in the mountains. Marveling at this, he reaches Soseki’s house, where he learns that the great master is blind. Despite reservations about what teachings such a man can offer him about color, Yuko perseveres; as a result, he is able to make the connection between his discovery in the mountains and Soseki, one that allows the old master to die happily and Yuko to fulfill his talent and find love.

Crystalline and spare, this tale nevertheless packs substantial heat in its passionate embrace of youthful ideals and matters of the heart.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-7434-5684-X

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE BLACK VIOLIN
by Maxence Fermine & translated by Chris Mulhern

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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by Robert Harris

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by Robert Harris

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.