A gonzo adventure novel that shreds the conventional wisdom that pulp can be pigeonholed.
In the dark days leading up to the Iraq War, two black marketeers blunder into an ancient conspiracy involving a secret sect of Islamic mystics.
Here’s the thing: If you’re going to write pulp fiction, jump in with both feet and let the blood fly. That’s what Bangladesh-based journalist Hossain has done in this kinetic debut novel set in the exploding streets of Baghdad. Our “good guys,” so to speak, are Dagr, a widowed former professor of economics who's turned to crime in the wake of the U.S. invasion, and Kinza, an anarchist berserker who can’t wait for the bad things to come—“When the rage comes, just stay behind him, that’s all,” warns Dagr of Kinza. It wasn't very pretty in the city in those days. “It’s a war,” observes one of Kinza’s corrupt connections. “We kill you, you kill us, who cares? The important thing is to have a sense of humor about it. When we were bombing the Kurds, do you think they were crying like babies?” This bickering duo is trying to get out of the city when they’re hired by a local sheik to track down the shadowy “Lion of Akkad,” a suspected serial killer who turns out to be a centenarian mental patient named Afzal Taha with ties to the Druze, the aforementioned cult. Unfortunately, during a skirmish, Kinza shoots the son of Hassan Salemi, a particularly nasty imam with a thirst for bloodshed. To facilitate their movement through the war-torn city, the two renegades enlist the help of Marine Pvt. Hoffman, a dope-smoking, rule-breaking hooligan who’s supposed to be looking for weapons of mass destruction but really just wants to be in country to “blow shit up.” It’s a marvelous mix of genres, blending the visceral atmosphere of a war movie with the casual nihilism of Catch-22 or the original M.A.S.H. complete with an Indiana Jones–style treasure quest to employ a mystical watch that doesn’t tell time to unleash the ancient power of the Druze before the sect’s ancient Alchemist, the real enemy, catches up with them.
A gonzo adventure novel that shreds the conventional wisdom that pulp can be pigeonholed.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-939419-24-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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