Canadian novelist Davies once again delivers the goods—with this solidly entertaining finale to the trilogy struck up by Rebel Angels (1982) and carried through in What's Bred in the Bone (1985). Blending a characteristic knack for wit, esoterica, and snobbery, Davies charges ahead with a buoyant tale of upper-class grantsmanship and modern-day cuckoldry. What Rebel Angels was for academe, and what Bred in the Bone was for art, his newest is for opera. Davies' central cast, resurfacing from previous novels, here conspire to reconstruct and mount an unfinished opera by the German romantic composer E.T.A. Hoffman—and the project is more than sufficient to generate the collegial rivalry and highbrow asides that have become the hallmarks of Davies' style. Arthur and Maria Cornish return—heading up a money-bag foundation formed in Bred in the Bone—with the intention of funding Hoffman's Magnanimous Cuckold; but it wouldn't be a Davies novel if we didn't also get a few wrangling intellectuals in tow, including Rev. Simon Darcourt and Clem Hollier, two Rebel Angels and Bred in the Bone alumni. A contemptible but brilliant graduate student by the name of Schnakenburg provides the musical score and learns a few manners along the way; the ghost of E.T.A. Hoffman himself provides commentary from that corner of limbo where unfulfilled artists go after this vale of cultural tears. At the core of the psychological action, Arthur and Maria reenact the Arthurian legend of Magnanimous Cuckold when—following evidence that Arthur has become impotent—Maria gets pregnant, and a close friend of Arthur's is singled out as the culprit. Along with this, there's Simon Darcourt's education in larceny when he swipes a painting and uncovers yet another juicy tidbit—art forgery—buried in the Cornish dynasty. A spry jaunt from an old master—once again in full command of the form.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1988
ISBN: 0140114335
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1988
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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
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