Still, Jamesland meanders agreeably, and gets better as it goes along. Another charmer from a gifted and very likable writer.
Interpreting the past and managing the future absorb the energies of four unconventional souls in this amiably loose-jointed second from Huneven (Round Rock, 1997).
The arresting Prologue introduces Alice Black, a 30ish semi-recluse unhappily involved with a married man, on the night when she’s awakened by a deer that has wandered into her house. Actually, her aunt Kate’s house, occupied by Alice while Kate, a sharp-witted natural aristocrat in her late 70s, languishes in a nursing home not far from her property in the LA neighborhood of Los Feliz. The opening chapters gradually contrast Alice’s haphazard connections to anything with her aunt’s preoccupation with her distinguished grandfather: the philosopher and psychologist William James, the subject of Kate’s ongoing unfinished “novel.” Between visits to Aunt Kate, Alice absorbs the shock of abandonment by her lover Nick (who won’t leave his movie star wife), goes to work as a typist for a scholar researching “the posthumous appearances and communications of William James” (as reported by James’s self-proclaimed psychic friends), and allows herself to fall for handsome, perfect (and dull) officemate Dewey Hupfeld (“the Knight of nice”). Meanwhile, Alice bonds variously with Unitarian minister Helen Harland (whose innovative services offend her church’s bureaucracy) and wretched Pete Ross (born Pedro Rosales): unemployed, grossly obese, estranged from his ex-wife and young son, possessed by both suicidal musings and an uncontrollably nasty temper. This is Anne Tyler/Gail Godwin/Jon Hassler territory, and Huneven works it efficiently, scattering expository details throughout her characters’ successive communications, meetings, and quarrels. The only problem: her warm and fuzzy empathy with eccentrics and misfits, initially gratifying, is hard to sustain over the course of a long novel.
Still, Jamesland meanders agreeably, and gets better as it goes along. Another charmer from a gifted and very likable writer.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41382-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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