Not for every taste, but it’s another illustration of the range of Tim Parks’s seemingly inexhaustible talents.
The prolific British author’s 12th novel returns him to Italy (where Parks and his family reside) for an intriguing change of pace.
It’s the story of a four-day “community experience” in which 15 would-be adventurers—six adults and nine teenagers—embark on a white-water kayaking trip along the Aurino River in the Southern Tyrol region of the Italian Alps. They’re a predictably mixed lot, including middle-aged bank executive Vincent, a recent widower, and the daughter (Louise) who’s growing up (and away from him) too quickly to be capable of sharing in his grief; overweight, over-eager Keith, an ardent, ingenuous boy in a swollen man’s body; cold-fish Max, a know-it-all student ruled by a mordant, contemptuous sense of humor; and river guide Clive, an aging ecological activist who does not refrain from delivering lectures on global warming (e.g., melting glaciers are making the waters they’re all traveling far more dangerous than usual) and irresponsible public policies—that is, when he’s not dashing off to earth-friendly conferences or protest demonstrations, or punishing his younger Italian girlfriend Michela by refusing to have sex. Vince’s burgeoning interest in the attractive Michela sparks one helpful complication, as do the cantankerous pronouncements of “canoeing” instructor Adam, whose bitter distrust of the motives of self-declared earth-savers estranges him from his own confused, withdrawn son, Mark. It’s all more than a little contrived and top-heavy—as is an enthusiast’s overabundance of detail about the metaphysics and techniques of braving those all-too-symbolic rapids (they are the meandering and treacherous currents of our lives, dear reader, and you are not to forget it). Nevertheless, Parks writes so knowledgeably and graphically about the exhilaration of engaging the unknown on its own unforgiving terms that it’s impossible not to be swept along the Aurino, despite the narrative’s blustering excesses.
Not for every taste, but it’s another illustration of the range of Tim Parks’s seemingly inexhaustible talents.Pub Date: April 12, 2006
ISBN: 1-55970-811-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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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