Although the events he recounts remain cryptic, Baricco’s style is lucid, and the appearance-versus-reality mind games he...
Two novellas, thematically related by the theme of love...or the lack of love.
The first, Mr. Gwyn, is a tour de force of literary fiction about a mysterious, somewhat reclusive and definitely quirky author. At 43, much to the distress of his agent, Jasper Gwyn has tired of writing books. After a brief and restless hiatus, he's inspired to create “portraits” in a way analogous to that of visual artists. He rents a studio and even commissions a composer to create “mood music” appropriate for the space. Then, to practice his craft, he hires his agent's assistant, Rebecca, to visit the studio four hours a day for 30 days. She simply lives her life there (though without clothing), and Gwyn observes her, though some days he doesn’t even bother to show up. At the end of that time, he produces a portrait in words that Rebecca finds extraordinarily insightful and deeply moving. Gwyn develops his talents and winds up with a flourishing business for those who want their portraits “painted” in words; the most meaningful one is for his agent, who has a terminal illness. Throughout the story, Baricco suggests that Gwyn is able to do in words what he can’t in life—get close to people. Rebecca then makes a startling discovery, believing that Gwyn has plagiarized his portraits from another author, Klarisa Rode, but in fact, he's begun publishing under assumed names. One of his works, published under the name Akash Narayan, is titled "Three Times at Dawn," not so coincidentally the name of Baricco's second novella. Though slighter, in some ways, this story is even more complex, for it focuses on three separate episodes revolving around a seedy hotel. In the first, Malcolm Webster meets a mysterious and seductive woman in his hotel room, while in the second, a young woman flirts with the hotel clerk (perhaps an older Malcolm Webster) as she tries to get some perspective on her relationship with her boyfriend up in their room. In the final section, a teenager, the younger Malcolm Webster, escapes from the squalor of the hotel with a woman detective as he deals with his dysfunctional family.
Although the events he recounts remain cryptic, Baricco’s style is lucid, and the appearance-versus-reality mind games he plays with his readers are fascinating.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938073-96-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
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