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THE GULF

A smart, slightly kooky exploration of art and money, faith and politics.

The author of the memoir The Art of Waiting (2016) and the story collection Mattaponi Queen (2010) takes readers inside a writers’ retreat for Christians with her first novel.

It began as a joke. Marianne, a poet, suggested to her novelist boyfriend, Eric, that a writing workshop for Evangelicals could be a lucrative endeavor. When Eric—now her ex—calls Marianne and asks her if she wants to manage the newly formed Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch, she can’t believe he’s serious, but he is, and she’s not really in a position to say no. She’s perennially underemployed, and her cheap apartment is about to go condo. So, she leaves New York for an abandoned motel on the outskirts of Sarasota, Florida. Marianne assures herself that this gig will give her plenty of time to concentrate on her own work, but running a school requires a lot of effort, and the students are more demanding than she had expected. Donald—also known as Davonte—is an R&B star trying to write a novel based on what he hopes will be his comeback. He needs Marianne to heat up his Lean Cuisines; he’s trying to lose weight. Janine, a devout home economics teacher who assumes that Marianne is a believer, too, wants to talk about God’s plan for her poems about Terri Schiavo. Just as she’s realizing these aspiring writers are real people rather than gullible rubes ripe for fleecing, Marianne learns that the Ranch is partnering with God’s World God’s Word, a for-profit educational conglomerate with ties to extreme right-wing politics. And then there’s a massive storm heading for the coast….Boggs bombards her heroine with difficulties—artistic, ethical, romantic, meteorological—at an antic pace, and the book has slapstick charm. But the heart of this novel is its cast. Marianne is a mess, and she’s not always a sympathetic character, but she’s real, and she’s capable of change. Rekindling her relationship with Eric is her primary preoccupation early on, but it’s her unexpected connection with Janine that proves more enduring, more honest, and more interesting.

A smart, slightly kooky exploration of art and money, faith and politics.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-55597-834-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019

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CONCLAVE

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

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THE SECRET HISTORY

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

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