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PRIVATE NOVELIST

Name: PRIVATE NOVELIST
Author: Nell Zink
ISBN: 978-0-062-45830-8

by Nell Zink ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016

Proof that experimental fiction can be fun.

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Early work by the acclaimed author of Nicotine (2016), Mislaid (2015), and Wallcreeper (2014).

“It having become apparent that I should write a novel, my next concern became which novel I should write. An obvious choice was Avner Shats’ recent debut, Sailing Toward the Sunset.” Thus begins Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats, which comprises the first half of this idiosyncratic (obviously) book. There’s an explanatory (sort of) foreword by the aforementioned Shats, and something like an account of how this peculiar work came to be is proffered by the narrator. Here’s the idea: an admirer of Zink’s writing, Shats encouraged her to write a novel. She responded by sending him her translation of his own novel—a chapter each day—during the month of December 1998. Zink (or the first-person narrator who may or may not be the author) is undaunted by the fact that she can’t read Hebrew (the language in which Shats wrote his novel), and she gets going by questioning the very concept of translation. What is ostensibly an English edition of a story about an Israeli spy turns, before it begins, into autobiography (or faux autobiography), a critique of trends in contemporary “literary” fiction, a consideration of the epistolary novel, and a short story interlude—and that’s just the first four chapters. “European Story for Avner Shats”—which makes up the second part of Private Novelist—is (or so we are told) a writing exercise inspired by prompts provided by Shats. It begins with the following declaration: “This story will be composed in bad English.” Zink earned critical acclaim with her debut, The Wallcreeper, and she made the National Book Award longlist with Mislaid (2015). Private Novelist would never have been published without those successes (no less a personage than Jonathan Franzen tried, and failed, to sell the manuscript). This is not an indictment. Readers who enjoy smart, playful postmodernism will be glad that Private Novelist has finally been made public.

Proof that experimental fiction can be fun.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-062-45830-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
AVALON
by Nell Zink

- BOOK REVIEW
DOXOLOGY
by Nell Zink

- BOOK REVIEW
NICOTINE
by Nell Zink

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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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.