Some Chinese puzzles are so exquisitely put together that one quite forgets that the object is finally to take them apart. This second novel by Beard (X20, 1997) is one such. November 1, 1993. Everything here takes place on November 1, 1993, from six in the morning until five in the afternoon. In that day’s issue of The Times of London, you will find announced the deaths of River Phoenix and Federico Fellini. That’s also the first day of the European Union. On that day Hazel Burns is born. So is Spencer Kelly. Hazel’s father is a well-to-do salesman; Spencer’s father is a working-class warehouseman. On November 1, 1993, Hazel Burns has just spent the night with Spencer Kelly at Spencer’s stately home. They are both 24. Behind the mansion is a smaller cottage where William Welsby lives. William is convinced that the unification of Europe will be England’s downfall. Spencer looks after William. On November 1, 1993, Spencer Kelly and Hazel Burns are on holiday with their families. They spend the day at the seashore. Henry Mitsui is a Japanese student living in England. He’s fallen in love with Hazel Burns, and on November 1, 1993, he stalks and confronts her in her college dormitory. Hazel has just been on the phone with Spencer Kelly, who has discovered a way to make free long- distance calls to Hazel. The police have been trying to catch Spencer for some time, but today he eludes them once more. It is November 1, 1993, and he has to go to his brother’s wedding. Are these all the same Spencers and Hazels? Are these all the same November 1, 1993s? How many stories are here? The best clue is in the Prologue: “A newspaper is a parcel containing many individual packets. Anybody who read them all would be mad.” Too clever by half, but witty and refreshing for most of the way. If you—re not into puzzles, though, you—d best steer clear.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55970-460-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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