A thoroughly effective horror page-turner from an author who’s mastered the genre.
Drago follows up his debut novel (Crow Creek, 2014) with another tale of small-town horror in the tradition of Stephen King.
Drago’s adroit and adrenaline-fueled second novel begins when a gaunt man in a hospital gown staggers into a small-town diner and begins vomiting “dark gristle.” The man has empty sockets where his eyes should be, and his body is studded with electrode ports. And as fast as you can say “illicit genetic experimentation,” we learn the man had once been an employee of EnTech, an experimental microbiology outfit located in the North Carolina town of Queensboro. EnTech is run by Drago’s truly hissable villainess, Margaret Ganis, who has “a high tuft of snow white hair and an unmistakable vascular birthmark across the left side of her face that looked like a red harpy’s wing” and whose skin “seems to bubble under the surface with tiny maggots.” When a local girl named Ashley Smith goes missing and some townsfolk assemble to search for her, they’re shockingly introduced to yet more evidence of dark biological tampering: seal-sized “death worms” that can suck the blood out of a grown human in seconds. Drago expertly balances the visceral thrills of such inhuman creatures against the far more premeditated evils of Ganis and her law enforcement henchman, Sheriff Waylon Osbourne, a hugely fat and wisecracking prominent Klan member who is, against all odds, the most enjoyable of the novel’s many well-drawn characters. Drago incorporates the cast (and some events) from his first novel so seamlessly that this book can be read independently, and although he still relies a bit too heavily on an array of Stephen King–style gimmicks (overly simplistic local yokels, especially; actual small-town residents will have to read this stuff with the usual forbearance), his dialogue crackles with wit, and his sense of dramatic pacing never fails him. In traditional horror-genre style, Drago orchestrates a climactic confrontation between the forces of good and evil that leaves much of Queensboro in ruins—and will leave readers very much wanting more from this author.
A thoroughly effective horror page-turner from an author who’s mastered the genre.Pub Date: April 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692411278
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Gold Avenue Press
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
