An intriguing artifact for hardcore fans but an unremarkable entry point for new readers.
A scholar is invited to an eerie scholarly retreat in this melancholy blast from the past.
At the end of the 1980s, Peter Straub (A Dark Matter, 2010, etc.) was in a rough patch, having spent three years writing Koko (2011), a bleak story about murderous Vietnam veterans to which the author was emotionally attached. It was that loss that inspired this dreary novella, which was published in a very limited edition in 1990, and is now unleashed on the general reading public. The book is almost myopically centered on Professor William Standish, an undistinguished poetry researcher who believes a unique scholarship will provide a leg up on his career—not to mention a welcome reprieve from the daily haranguing from his pregnant wife Jean, already suffering from an early miscarriage. In short order, Standish has accepted an offer from Esswood House, a little-known British library known for supporting D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot, among others. Standish’s fascination is with a distant relative, Isobel Standish, who published a single volume of poetry in her lifetime, Crack, Whack and Wheel, in 1912. Straub does inject his characteristically subterranean sense of ordinary menace into Standish’s journey, starting with a short but near-violent encounter with the locals at a pub. “The fellow was murdered there,” the barman tells him offhandedly. Then we’re off into the labyrinthine Esswood House, tended by the even more impenetrable custodian Robert Wall. There, as Standish begins to unravel the mysteries of Isobel’s life, he starts to become a bit unraveled himself, obsessing over his wife’s impending birth and experiencing dark and disturbing visions. The writing is fine, but the story folds in on itself without ever really delivering either a genuine scare or emotional resonance. Like the novella form itself, it’s a hard act to characterize—neither a true ghost story nor an Edgar Allen Poe–like portrait of a psychological schism.
An intriguing artifact for hardcore fans but an unremarkable entry point for new readers.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-605698-304-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
IN THE NEWS
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
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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