A sparkling sequence of tales that bends and flips familiar ideas and fantastic visions.
Divergent characters find themselves in startling situations in this debut collection of unconventional sci-fi and fantasy stories.
There is no guiding principle running through these tales save that they all look beyond the world as readers discern it, challenging—as the best speculative fiction does—a number of preconceived notions. Some might think that the relatable would be difficult to discover in a story about a lonely robot raising orphaned dinosaurs or two friends becoming cut off from each other by the untimely, unexpected closing of doors between worlds, but that dismissal would be premature. While each tale asks readers to forget what they know of the cosmos, identity, gender, or the ordinary, that request comes not in order to fill their minds with convoluted new concepts but rather to twist basic facts into inventive shapes. Someone accidentally cursed to be reborn as a rose sheds light on the symbols readers choose for their affections and how they value them. A non–fairy tale about a girl and a monster she once knew gives readers the ability to overturn the scripts of their own lives and realize who they—and their friends—truly are, however they might be judged. A shadow cast from inside a black hole peels away layers of loss and grief. And “How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps,” centered on longing, tells a surprising, touching tale about those who fail to fit in and how they can carve out spaces of their own. There’s a tremendous variety in these stories: long and short, happy and sad, taking twists and turns or running in blazing straight lines. But what they all have in common is a sense of wonder (“The moment I knew I could love this robot was when the robot asked what I would like to be called. ‘Tesla,’ I said, and the blue LED smiley face in the upper corner of the robot’s screen flickered in a shy smile”). There is a strange power in the realms beyond this universe or hidden in plain sight, and Rustad captures it from myriad angles. The circumstances may be bizarre, but the characters are blindingly real, and it’s only through that combination that these pieces can cut so unflinchingly to the heart.
A sparkling sequence of tales that bends and flips familiar ideas and fantastic visions.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-59021-641-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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