An incredible debut, as entertaining as it is outlandish, with at least one thing (and most likely many more) for everyone.
Bach weaves a stunning debut out of disparate parts, melding settings and genres in this experimental literary novel.
This novel refuses simple description. It follows its lead, Krishawn, who’s contending with a series of progressively worsening brain tumors. But what emerges from his struggle is more than merely a meditation on the meaning of life. It’s a journey from hedonism to psychedelics to sci-fi, trafficking not in fablelike metaphor but in nuanced, even esoteric, dialogue. The novel presents a morass of stories, covering sex, death, and the rest of human experience through its cast and multifarious settings, all of which inform each other, from a mystical mountain-climbing expedition to an ambulatory phallus and beyond, shifting in both content and tone throughout. It’s fitting that Krishawn’s most concerning cancerous growths are pressing on Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, brain structures responsible for speech and language development, respectively, as many stories seem sparked by accidents of language: “Krishawn had always thought it funny how ontology and oncology were separated only by a ‘c.’ ” But again, reading this novel is not only a matter of interpreting the disparate vignettes of the story as the degradations of a dying mind, drug-born hallucinations, or religious experiences pointing to larger universal truths. Rather, they are all of these things and none of them, calling on the reader to find the connections among the elements of this pastiche and make of them both a whole and a sum of parts. Readers will find the novel challenging, but it’s never boring; it discards the willful obfuscation of many experimental novels in favor of a feverish pace and a wildly emotional ride. Individual sections are readable on their own, and while the vocabulary may sometimes be obtuse, the structure and context keep meaning within reach, and readers ultimately feel more like they’re being taught this unfamiliar vernacular than taunted with it.
An incredible debut, as entertaining as it is outlandish, with at least one thing (and most likely many more) for everyone.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9976812-0-8
Page Count: 566
Publisher: Tetracules Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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