Adroit in its storytelling, this book offers two finely drawn lives and a continuing mystery as to how they will overlap.
A debut novel focuses on one man and the many possibilities in life.
Luke Morrow is a lovable loser. An advertising account executive who bet everything on an Internet startup––only to lose his marriage, reputation, and career in the process––he ekes out an existence in Southern California. His main joy in life comes from moments with his son, Trevor, a boy who loves nothing more than a day at the Manhattan Beach Dunes. As income concerns force Luke to downgrade his apartment (which requires him to euthanize his tropical fish, following the advice that it is best “to throw them hard onto the sidewalk, killing them instantly”) and pursue work far below his accustomed pay scale, will he ever rebuild his life? Just as he is at his lowest, the reader is introduced, thanks to a supernatural occurrence, to a very different Luke. What if instead of lovable, he was ruthless? An alternative Luke still possesses a history that encompasses a divorce and a son named Trevor, though differing circumstances allow the protagonist to gorge himself at the buffet of the superrich. From private jets to call girls to a nanny whose breast implants he pays for, this Luke is certainly successful, though hardly even likable. So will the real Luke Morrow please stand up? The author adeptly paints very detailed profiles of both Lukes, and readers should feel very much in the moment, whether the nice Luke is offering his old weight lifting gloves to a homeless veteran or the crass one is waiting impatiently to receive his new yacht. Though moments of the wealthy Luke’s life can become repetitive, such as a trip to Hawaii that carries the reader along for a catamaran ride and snorkeling with “red dragon wrasses and purple-tipped tangs,” the curious will wonder how it all ends. Surely somewhere between these contrasting Lukes, there lies an important lesson. Tightly written and as believable (in terms of characterization) as it is ostentatious (in terms of overall construct), the novel should cause many readers to fervently seek what that lesson might be.
Adroit in its storytelling, this book offers two finely drawn lives and a continuing mystery as to how they will overlap.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Aqueous Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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