An astonishing—often suspenseful, always compassionate—depiction of humanity and the ties that bind us.
With an honest voice and abundant imagination, Rourks’ Southern gothic debut explores human kinship, violence, and isolation in rural Louisiana.
“There really isn’t anything astonishing about the moon trees,” says the narrator of the title story in this mighty debut. “As a matter of fact, some of them are lost. No one bothered to keep track of where they’d been planted, had never even made the plaques.” Much like these trees—their once-valued seeds taken into space to orbit the Earth—the characters in Rourks’ 15 inventive stories have been forgotten by society; on the surface, they’ve been left simply to grow, work, fight the elements, then die along the swamplands of Louisiana. “Everything Shining,” for example, describes the life of a laid-off, injured oil rig laborer. As he struggles to make sense of his new life, he begrudgingly lets his cousin store stolen scrap metal in his backyard, unaware of the disastrous consequences that will follow. In “Ghosts,” a woman fixates on the events leading up to her mother’s suicide as she prepares to meet her wife’s family and to give birth to a child of her own. While in “Pinched Magnolias,” a parish sheriff helps her sister cover up a violent crime, in “El Feo,” an ex-con works to build a new life for his family, even when he suspects he might have been framed for murder. With these stories, Rourks creates literary “plaques” for her characters—carving out space for and drawing attention to their experiences whether they are Pizza Hut employees, lawbreakers, or those too afraid to leave the house. Through her dynamic prose—graceful even as it propels each piece forward—she realizes the humanity of each individual. Themes of poverty, anguish, violence, and family loyalty—for better or worse—tie together these short tales. Still, amid such bleakness, Rourks infuses a sort of magic into each one. These worlds, alive with both the nature of Louisiana and the empathy the author brings to each character, will leave you eager for more.
An astonishing—often suspenseful, always compassionate—depiction of humanity and the ties that bind us.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62557-013-0
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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