An engrossingly macabre debut novel by St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent Hernon (coauthor of Under the Influence: The Unauthorized Story of the Anheuser-Busch Dynasty, 1991). In the argot of neuropathology, ``kindling'' is a horrific process employing an electric current to sensitize an animal's brain—to the point where it goes into spontaneous seizure and is effectively reprogrammed, permanently modifying certain behavioral patterns (antisocial or otherwise). And thereby hangs the tale spun by Hernon. His hero, John Brook, jumps at the chance to join the elite staff of Dr. Robert Hartigan's St. Louisbased clinic, celebrated for developing advanced treatments for severe mental illness, including criminal pathologies. The young forensic psychiatrist is also looking forward to renewing old acquaintances with Jenny Malone, a Ph.D. psychologist with whom he had a fling at the University of Chicago. What Brook doesn't at first appreciate is that the unscrupulous Hartigan and his ambitious subordinates are conducting dreadful experiments on the brains of unwilling convicts (supplied by a venal warden at the state penitentiary). Their efforts are underwritten by James Paulus, a wealthy (albeit delusional) conservative who's convinced kindling could solve America's violent-crime problem and put him in the White House. Unfortunately, Hartigan is experiencing grave difficulties in achieving the breakthroughs he has promised, and when two dangerous prisoners driven intermittently mad by their electroshock therapies make a successful break from the clinic, Brook finally realizes something must be done. With the intrepid Malone in tow, the determined shrink pursues Ed Lind, a bank robber he believes could be rehabilitated. Brook gets his man, and the unlikely trio heads for a sanctuary in the Smoky Mountains. Flushed from their refuge by Tom Brody, the clinic's ruthless security chief, and a crew of heavies, they make their last stand atop a forest-fire spotter's tower at the height of a November blizzard in North Carolina's hill country. Robin Cook meets Soldier of Fortune in a gripping (if often over-the-top) thriller chock-full of medico-legal arcana.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-14298-2
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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