A little too scattered and willfully antic to rank with Pelevin’s best. Nevertheless, further proof that this merry satirist...
The world of advertising gets a richly comic comeuppance in this latest (1999) novel by the hip absurdist (Buddha’s Little Finger, 2000, etc.).
Protagonist Babylen Tatarsky is a nondescript shop assistant who fails in technical school, and as a poet, before finding work as an adman entrusted with creating slogans and campaigns aimed at selling Western products (like Pepsi-Cola) to Russian consumers. The time is the late 1990s, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Pelevin has a lot of fun with Tatarsky’s rapid rise through the industry, the sources of his best (often ribald) ideas (which are triggered by hallucinogen-inspired “conversations” with a fire-breathing dragon and the ghost of Che Guevara, who’s now a Buddhist)—and also in sketching industry colleagues like the Wagner-loving Malyuta and the pseudonymous “Sasha Bio,” a henpecked married pornographer. But the story veers into futuristic dystopian fantasy with the discovery of a sinister conspiracy masterminded by unidentified conservatives who employ computer-generated televised images of nonexistent politicians to maintain public order and create appropriate appetites. Images of 1984 and Brave New World begin dancing through readers’ heads, and the high hilarity flattens out (as it also does in some of Tatarsky’s talks with Che, which are not as consistently funny as Pelevin seems to think). Tatarsky, however, is appealingly venal and self-absorbed (he brings to mind any number of Gogol’s wretched, put-upon Everymen), and his efforts to “educate” himself (in the techniques of Freudian analysis and the intricacies of Babylonian mythology, among other arcana) are very funny indeed. And there’s a terrific (and quite rude) climactic joke involving the helplessly amusing figure of Boris Yeltsin.
A little too scattered and willfully antic to rank with Pelevin’s best. Nevertheless, further proof that this merry satirist wears the mantle of Gogol, Bely, and Bulgakov with more flair than almost any other contemporary novelist.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03066-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
