A wonderful discovery for the scholars, who will find Capote in possession, in his early 20s, of a confident voice and fine...
A work of literary archaeology that reckons, in a roundabout way, as Capote’s debut—save that he put it aside to work on Other Voices, Other Rooms, and this elegant, brief novel was lost.
Lost, literally, for when Capote abandoned Brooklyn for better things following the publication of In Cold Blood—or so the story goes—he left a trunk containing the manuscript of Summer Crossing behind. Someone rescued it, and now it is the world’s to enjoy. Capote, at his best, was nearly unbeatable; here, young but already with a jaded worldview, he peeks behind the upper-class curtain separating young Grady McNeil from the rest of the universe. Grady is only 17, but she’s advanced for her years—considering, after all, that this is 1947 or thereabouts, so soon after the war that her parents feel compelled to sail to their home in Cannes to make sure it’s still there. “And shop; of course we’ll shop,” adds her mother, very much to the palace born and with her priorities firmly in place. Grady wishes to sit this trip out: She has discovered the wonders of Broadway and its “pearl-eyed perfumed Negroes, those men, silk- or sailor-shirted, toughs or pale-toothed and lavender-suited, those men that watched, smiled, followed.” And though vaguely engaged to an upper-class twit who turns out to be not so bad, Grady is now sleeping with a war veteran who—she is very surprised to learn—is Jewish. Clyde Manzer is all business, a kind of Stanley Kowalski without the table manners; he likes Grady, but not much. Suffice it to say here that their romance ends badly—in fact, on a note out of Reefer Madness.
A wonderful discovery for the scholars, who will find Capote in possession, in his early 20s, of a confident voice and fine storytelling skills. But Capote is for readers, and here they will find a pleasing—if surely dated—entertainment.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6522-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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