Unsettling, endearing, and brilliant.
A dysfunctional Louisiana family spins out of control in this novel by Dasgupta (The Sea Singer, 2016, etc.).
Barn is a 7-year-old boy who wishes that he had the power of flight. At the beginning of the story, he climbs up on the roof of the family home in rural Louisiana, having glued feathers to his skin. It’s easy to understand why he wants to fly away; his father, referred to as Uncle Gerald, is a ne’er-do-well who’s wanted for all manner of criminal offences. Barn’s cousin Mutty, the novel’s first-person narrator, soon convinces Barn that he actually can’t fly. Mutty lives with his mother and Barn in a boarded-up farmhouse. He also has a fascination with Pepper, a mysterious, vociferous young woman who shows up at the farm on a regular basis. Pepper and Mutty aren’t friends, but they often have uninhibited, rough sex. After Uncle Gerald is arrested, Barn starts refusing to talk, and soon the family’s world descends into turmoil. Another character, referred to as The Dirty Man, shows up in town—a chilling figure from Pepper’s sordid past. Mutty’s estranged father, Pierre, reveals that The Dirty Man, otherwise known as Brody, bought Pepper from another man named Mallow, and he now owns “her skin and everything in between.” The Dirty Man is intent on taking her away, but she’s a fighter (and a biter). She’s also growing emotionally closer to Mutty, who will do anything to protect those close to him. This is a deeply idiosyncratic novel with a wildly unique descriptive style. The opening reads like a book for early readers: “Cow, cow, cow, went the moo, and cat, cat, cat went the meow, and dog, dog, dog, went the bark.” This approach continues throughout, although it becomes rather more adult in tone after Mutty and Pepper’s visit to a sex toy shop: “Leather, leather, leather went the thong. Zzzz, zzzz, zzzz went the vibrate.” Mutty is a desperately unreliable narrator who offers a deliciously distorted reading of events. At one point he remarks, “The man walked up to us. Pepper’s nails were deep into my skin.” This is repeated as “Pepper walked up to us. The man’s nails were deep into my skin.” And then, “My skin walked up to us, and Pepper’s nails were deep into the man’s skin.” It’s akin to experimental poetry, and readers are regularly left piecing together fragments while searching for meaning. It takes some work on the reader’s part, but it’s well worth the effort. Dasgupta is an ingenious writer with a painterly eye for detail, as when Mutty confides: “all I could do was sit and watch Barn play under the pepper sprinkled sun.” He also has an equal power to disturb—as when Mutty buys strawberry-flavored edible underwear at a store as a snack for Barn to eat. This is courageously strange writing that will intrigue and beguile the reader from the get-go, and it boasts a denouement that would make Quentin Tarantino squirm.
Unsettling, endearing, and brilliant.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60489-211-6
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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