A strange, arcane journey into South American horror with roots in the real evil that men do.
A widower burdened with paranormal abilities tries to protect his son from a dangerous cult.
After two well-received story collections, most recently The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (2021), Enríquez presents a sprawling gothic novel holding a black mirror toward Argentina’s history of corruption and political violence and dosed with the conventions of horror fiction. Roughly told from the point of view of a father, a mother, and their son at different stages of their lives, the story can feel aimless, but the sheer dread and paranoia the author delivers are palpable, too. When we first meet Juan Peterson and his son, Gaspar, they’re trying to stay under the radar of the Cult of the Shadow. This dangerous, child-murdering religious order is led by the family of Juan’s wife, Rosario, who recently died in a car accident. Rosario’s creepy family discovered early on that Juan is a medium who can control “the Darkness,” a preternatural force that hungers for human flesh, during occult rites. Juan has always grudgingly gone along with his in-laws' wishes, participating in these ceremonies despite the terrible physical toll they take on him. But now, the cult wants to (somehow?) move his consciousness into his son's body before the Darkness takes him completely, and he's furtively trying to undermine them. He has secret allies in his sister-in-law, Tali, and Stephen, the son of the order’s leader, who are helping to mask Gaspar’s innate abilities. Later, a flashback to Rosario’s work as an anthropologist demonstrates how mythology comes into play, while later, a grown-up Gaspar struggles with his dark inheritance. It’s awkward and exhausting by turns, often by design. Somehow the shock of such violence delivered upon children and the inevitable fatigue generated by unrelenting horror also mirror the author’s mistrust of reality as we know it.
A strange, arcane journey into South American horror with roots in the real evil that men do.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-4514-9514-3
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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
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