A shrewdly unique portrait of everyday America.
This second installment of a two-volume novel charts the everyday lives of the members of a Missouri-based family and its acquaintances.
The first volume of Dieker’s (The Biographies of Ordinary People: Vol. 1, 2017) unusual work opens in 1989, introducing Jack and Rosemary Gruber and their three young girls, Meredith, Natalie, and Jackie. This sequel picks up with Jack and Rosemary in 2004—their girls have grown, and the family faces the trials, tribulations, and trends of the new millennium. Meredith, the eldest of the Gruber sisters and the novel’s most engaging character, has just graduated from college and is still determined to become a writer. When her internship at a Minneapolis theater company falls through, she is forced to take a position in telemarketing. The tale follows her occasionally precarious attempts to stake her claim in life, her jobs, her dates, and her dream to write professionally. A criticism of the first volume was that nothing much happens outside of daily rituals. The same can be said here; the characters send emails, surf the internet, load the dishwasher, and pour coffee—all rather mundane. Jack teaches; Rosemary still works at the bank. But while this sequel continues to meditate on the humdrum, it is far from boring. Subtle changes, from struggling with dial-up internet access and wondering “what’s a blog?” to using online video chat and emojis, cleverly create the overarching sense of time passing, the incremental ticking of the clock in other people’s lives. Dieker’s writing is remarkably intuitive and descriptive, understanding and detailing subtle traits of human nature: “Meredith sighed, the little grunt of air out of her nose that Jackie had been listening to almost her whole life.” As in Volume 1, there is a lack of narrative drive here, which may deter some readers. In many respects, this approach feels intentional and remains faithful to the pattern of day-to-day existence, which does not always yield a story. This is a thoughtfully conceived book that is mindful not only of technological progressions, but also the cyclical nature of life—ending on Meredith’s 35th birthday, the age of her mother at the opening of the first volume.
A shrewdly unique portrait of everyday America.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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