A challenging, topsy-turvy addition to 21st-century pandemic-inspired literature.
A virus-induced plague causes mass forgetfulness in a colony of Virginians in a literary SF novel by poet, essayist, and playwright Kannemeyer (An Alphabestiary, 2018, etc.).
During a worldwide plague that has spread from Eastern Europe and may or may not be human-made, a dozen or so survivors subsist in rural Virginia. Their bizarre ailment basically causes memory loss—though more severe symptoms can include catatonia, violent psychosis, and death—with commensurate emotional upheavals. One in 20 people has natural immunity; others are slower to contract the mind-altering disease. As the colony perseveres in diminished fashion (there are still utilities, TV, and the internet), scientists working on a cure hastily formulate a succession of “X”-coded medications. A batch called X7, though showing promise, is recalled when health care worker Jody secretly steals a stash for herself and her friends. The pills, while ostensibly restoring lost memories, have the perniciously addictive side effect of amplifying existing ones vividly. They can also conflate memories. And it transpires that Jody, her friend Edie, her boyfriend, Millar, and the rest have some awful things in their tangled pasts to confront. Or not confront, as the case may be, as the ensemble relives past traumas and relationships, both actual and imagined. It’s a fantastical, Borges-ian premise, though the Covid-19 pandemic (not to mention an implied Alzheimer’s metaphor) gives a contemporary tone to meditations—mostly by characters in no condition to meditate—on the nature of identity and its relation to memory. There are extensive references to Proust, rock song lyrics (some characters were in a band together), and local Virginia history. All of it keeps the level of intellectual engagement high, even when the effects of the contagion bring to mind amnesiac, zombie, and apocalypse tropes. Characters scramble their own realities via X7 abuse (despite Millar’s attempts to maintain order via written bios and journaling), and a five-year narrative timeline unfolds in nonchronological order. Given that structure, some readers may find the jagged, loosely full-circle storyline more than a little disorienting—much like the muddled interior lives of Philip K. Dick’s junkies and informants in A Scanner Darkly—while others may see it as perfectly befitting the jarring dislocations of Covid-19.
A challenging, topsy-turvy addition to 21st-century pandemic-inspired literature.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-409-4
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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