George Mills, who lives in St. Louis and makes his living by moving furniture out of the apartments of evicted-black-folks, claims to be "saved." True, there's little in George that obviously seems to justify this state of grace. But saved he says he is. And, to support his claim, there are historical flashbacks here to his ancestors—all the other dirty-worker, shlemazl George Millses of the past, people (like the Jews in history) who have been handed unimaginable misfortune . . . but who have also therefore been granted spiritual and physical survival. Elkin gives us a George Mills in medieval Poland, for instance, lost and looking for a Crusade. ("Kille killee smash balls son bitchee pagan mothers? Killee killee bang chop for Jeezy? Which way Moslem bastards?") And we meet the George Mills who's trapped in an 18th-century Turkish seraglio and must pretend to be a eunuch. But, though very funny about half the time, these Mel-Brooks-style flashbacks (contemporary vernacular in period costume) are the weaker half of this eccentric, loosely assembled, overlong Elkin-thon. Better by far are some of the contemporary sequences. There's the episode in which the modern George Mills takes a side job as an aide to a rich, young, dying woman: they go to Mexico together, to a laetrile clinic—and Elkin manages to make this grand-guignol material into a hilarious circus. There's the detailing of George's job as the evictor of poor blacks—with Elkin's fearless portrayal of despicable people and acts in all their ambiguity. And there's the story of Cornell Messenger, a professor/novelist (and Meals-on-Wheels volunteer) who takes an emotionally fraught trip to Nashville with his clutzy, illiterate son Harve: a skin-prickling vignette of fatherly love and shame. Great set-pieces? Absolutely: Elkin's dark frolics are nothing short of marvelous at their best—full of risk and rich, clotted-cream prose. So, though this 488-page novel is a leaky collection of parts rather than one whole strong book (Elkin is a short-form writer no matter how he's packaged), connoisseurs of comic fiction will consider it required reading: a brilliant set of flags blowing the irrepressible wind of Elkin's fierce, bold comedy.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1982
ISBN: 1564782921
Page Count: 548
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1982
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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