Bold, elliptical, fashionably inconclusive and very French.
Djian (Unforgivable, 2010, etc.) provides further insights into what randy French academics are up to when they’re not deconstructing everything.
Marc has long since accommodated himself to the fact that he’s a mediocre writer. Since those who can’t, teach, he’s settled into giving writing workshops at a French university and taking occasional students to bed. These little affairs of the heart are all part of the perks of being a professor, he tells himself, and things seem to go perfectly well until he wakes up one morning to find his latest conquest dead in his bed. In fact, according to Marc’s disturbingly affectless narration, things go pretty well after that, at least for a while. He disposes of the body in a deep, secret pool known only to himself and his sister Marianne; the police inquiries into the disappearance of Barbara, as Marc eventually remembers her name to be, are pro forma; and when Myriam Machinchose, Barbara’s new stepmother, shows up on campus to learn more about the stepdaughter she’d barely met, Marc ends up in bed with her with remarkably little fuss and even less reflection. The only cloud on the horizon, it would seem, is Annie Eggbaum, a hopeless writing student with a great body, boundless self-confidence and a father right out of The Sopranos. Annie keeps throwing herself at Marc, and the combination of her enticements, her threats and the beatings Marc gets from her father’s thugs is so persuasive that eventually, he’s bound to give in, despite the fact that he’s still continuing his affair with Myriam. The women in Marc’s life increasingly blend together in his memory and desire until the inevitable consequences.
Bold, elliptical, fashionably inconclusive and very French.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0759-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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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