Grabbing academia where it hurts the most, by its swollen, unintelligible poststructuralist theories, the prolific Everett (Frenzy, 1997, etc.) uses a most unlikely foil: a genius baby who reads and writes but refuses to speak, striking fear into his parents and all those who kidnap him for their own nefarious ends. Baby Ralph, born with his formidable intellect ready for higher stimulation, is opposed to speech on aesthetic and philosophical grounds. Having no such scruples against writing, however, and feeling himself loved by his frustrated-artist mother, he begins composing notes to her (“ralph needs books in his crib ralph does not wish to rely on the moving lips for knowledge”), and once she gets over her shock, like a true mother she nurtures him. Meanwhile, his father—a pompous academic who fawns over Roland Barthes, bringing him home for supper—at first believes Ralph to be mildly retarded. But he’s in for trouble once he realizes that his son really is not only smarter than he is but able to blackmail him over an affair Daddy’s having with a graduate student. The shrink these parents find for Ralph can’t accept what he is either, but even so decides to kidnap him, hiding him away until she can use him to (she hopes) make her famous. From her mean-spirited, alcoholic clutches, he falls into the hands of a top-secret military intelligence group that wants him for a spy. But then Ralph is saved from his maximum-security prison cell by his guard, a quiet Latino who smuggles him home after Ralph writes that he misses his mother. Through all this, including a final free-for-all that involves his previous captors, the Catholic Church, and Ferdinand Marcos, the baby wonder is developing into a full-blown cynic who finds Lacan helpful for potty training and uses Aristotelian logic to deconstruct what’s real and what’s fiction. A smart, rollicking sendup, but to grasp it all requires patience and an insider’s knowledge of the deconstructionist game—making it a story not for everyone.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55597-296-9
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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