An inscrutable wonder of a book that rewards a reader’s attention with its own returned gaze.
Imprisoned for his lack of streamlined perfection, a subversive eco-guru (or perhaps ordinary human man) finds solace in the minute remnants of the natural world that infiltrate his cell.
The narrator of this dashingly absurd novel has been imprisoned for the crime of appearing outside his dwelling in possession of a “knobby stick” whose organic imperfections offend the robot Plotinus, which apprehends him. Stripped of his coveralls, shoes, socks, and stick, the narrator is flung into a closet whose only aperture aside from the locked door is an air vent set high up in the wall. Here he is attended solely by the Plotinus, who arrives clanging and screeching to deliver ancient breakfast rolls or punish forbidden hoarding of dust and twigs. Rather than succumbing to his deprivations, however, the narrator sets himself the task of “consider[ing] the positive aspects of exile and of [his] diminished circumstances,” as he raps his knuckles against the air vent in the coded sequences that translate into the novel. In addition to the Plotinus, the narrator has another caller: the gullible Vector, who, “cloaked in his Ginza and treading air,” pops in to marvel over the narrator’s own organic knobbiness and quest to become “a thing that knows nothing beyond what it is.” The narrator fully expects to spend his incarceration, which will surely equate to the rest of his life, trading the pseudo-mysticism of his memories with the Vector for the twigs, sacks, and crumbs the Plotinus will shortly discover and whisk away. But then a third entity enters his orbit: a hornet who flies in through the air vent and stings him on the knuckle. The insect, whom he names Smaragdos, becomes the central focus of the narrator’s impressive powers of attention and offers a way of reinhabiting the world outside his closet. Ducornet’s latest is replete with figures that represent mankind in all its vainglorious hubris to great comedic effect while echoing the familiar sorrow of humanity’s severance from, and ultimate destruction of, the natural world that gives us both our meaning and our memories. It is a surreal novel that, nonetheless, feels disconcertingly real. Ultimately, whether or not the Plotinus succeeds in breaking our narrator’s spirit, the Vector succeeds in mythologizing his failing body, or Smaragdos succeeds in living her alien life alongside his own, the reader is assured that what will be left for us is the truism that “the poor will inherit the earth. (Such as it is.)”
An inscrutable wonder of a book that rewards a reader’s attention with its own returned gaze.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781566896818
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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