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CORINA’S WAY

Name: CORINA’S WAY
Author: Rod Davis
ISBN: 1-58838-129-3

by Rod Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

In the tradition of Flannery O’Connor or John Gregory Toole: a welcome romp, told in an old-fashioned style and with...

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A lighthearted but spicy bouillabaisse, New Orleans–set, by Texas journalist Davis (American Voudou, not reviewed).

Corina Youngblood may never have made it through divinity school, but she’s a bona fide priestess of santeria, the African mélange of Christianity and animism that arrived with the slaves and still survives. The proprietress of a small botanica in New Orleans, Corina dispenses spiritual advice and herbal remedies to her modest but loyal clientele who come to her with complaints about everything from their teeth to their love lives. It’s not a gold mine, of course, but Corina gets by—until the Delgado brothers try to run her out of business. Cuban immigrants with oversized egos and ambitions to match, Elroy and Julio Delgado have come up with the idea of launching a SuperBotanica (“a Wal-Mart of spiritual supplies”), and the site they’ve chosen is just a few blocks from Corina. She has to branch out, fast, or she’ll be undersold within a year. Fortunately, Corina has just made the acquaintance of Gus Houston, chaplain of Miss Angelique’s Academy for Young Ladies in the ultra-posh Garden District. Not much of a preacher (he was never ordained and has barely read the Bible), Gus sits in his office all day, listening miserably to the complaints of spoiled rich teenagers. In desperation one day he refers one of his whining charges to Corina, who solves the girl’s problems in half an hour and works out a referral scheme with Gus. Soon white debutantes are streaming through Corina’s door in search of spiritual enlightenment, and she’s running in the black for the first time in years. Gus, more popular at school than ever, begins sleeping with the headmistress and organizes a Gospel choir that performs in the New Orleans Jazzfest. Still, though, the problems with the Delgado brothers haven’t gone away.

In the tradition of Flannery O’Connor or John Gregory Toole: a welcome romp, told in an old-fashioned style and with traditional southern charm.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 1-58838-129-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: NewSouth

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.