Olmstead returns to rural New England (territory familiar from his 88 Soft Water) for his second novel: a dispiriting mishmash of domestic trivia, male-bonding rituals, and backwoods black comedy. Protagonist Eddie Ryan is the town undertaker in Inverawe, New Hampshire, a warmhearted guy respected by the community and devoted to his wife: (Mary) and kids (Eileen, Little Eddie). The only cloud over their marriage is Eddie's drinking, which began after his father's death; four years later, he still feels the pain. On Christmas Eve, a logger called Cody shows up with the body of his partner, cut in two by a chain saw. Cody wants the body stuffed; Eddie demurs ("there are laws involved here"); Cody cremates his partner in the woods. Oddly enough, the conscientious Eddie does not report the death; by now he has a good rapport with Cody, finding balm in this free spirit, and soon the logger is living in the Ryans' yard. His presence creates some tensions between Eddie and Mary, but they are left unexamined as Olmstead trolls erratically for other material: the death and burial of the town matriarch, the 500-pound Mrs, Huguenot; Cody's edgy reunion with the wife he abandoned way back when; out-of-state fishing and hunting trips for Eddie and Cody. The narrative moves sluggishly between the mundane ("Little Eddie has a persistent case of the shits again") and the melodramatic (the town doctor, a Vietnamese refugee, kills himself after Eddie discovers he has been removing the hearts of dead people and selling them). At the end, Eddie and Mary are still together, though less harmoniously; Cody has moved on, and Mary has gone back to school. Every issue raised here is subsequently evaded; even the climax of a deer-hunt disappears between chapters. Cody, the novel's one potential energy source, is an instantly recognizable type (with a pedigree stretching back to Huck Finn) who yet never becomes an individual. A deeply unsatisfying work.
Pub Date: June 25, 1990
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1990
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
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
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