Eighth in the impressive Best New Horror anthologies and again an outstanding collection, not to be missed by connoisseurs of chopped fingers and chilled blood. The indefatigable Jones (editor of some 40 anthologies) offers a sparkling overview of the horror fiction of 1996 and includes much information essential to writers of the genre—and to readers- -such as a compendium of useful addresses for organizations, magazines, book dealers, and market information. Jones teams up with Kim Newman to assemble a requiem for horror folks who have gone to that big Necronomicom in the sky and are presumably getting the complexities of the Cthulhu Mythos explained by the Master (Lovecraft) himself. This necrology and Jones's introduction alone are worth the price of the book. Back in harness, meantime, are standout stylists Poppy Z. Brite (``Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz''), whose brilliantly inventive bloody prose drives a tale concerning the wraith of Archduke Ferdinand—a wraith that's trying to murder the still animate magician Cagliostro in New Orleans, thus avoiding the rise of Mussolini, which Cagliostro is then planning; and Thomas Liggoti, whose ``Gas Station Carnivals'' celebrates Depression-era filling stations that offered their customers unsophisticated sideshow carnivals—suggesting that they were in fact a queasy and horrible peek-a-boo delusion of the abyss. The last story by the late Karl Edward Wagner, ``Final Cut,'' will have you agreeing with its narrator that ``no one ever gets well in a hospital.'' Also memorable is Terry Lamsley's ``Walking the Dog,'' about a pet-sitter who's caring for a large beast that's not quite a dog—and that has an indecent appetite for small children. Outstandingly well-told stories, a kind of subterranean mainstream art, that linger on your brain like Government Inspected Meat stamps.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7867-0474-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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