Keith Donohue

Donohue's latest may not be his best, but it offers another entertaining story in that literary supernatural vein that he's worked in so well for four novels now. Here the main element is an autistic boy who, as the title indicates, has taken to obsessively drawing monsters. At the same time his parents start seeing strange things, hearing strange noises, and learning about shipwrecks and the lost bodies of the drowned, who might possibly be roaming around as angry ghosts if you talk to the local priest's housekeeper about it (he really wishes you wouldn't though). Also tangled up in the increasing fright is his reluctant friend Nick, the son of his parents' best friends.

The story sort of ambles along for a good while, throwing out tidbits and going down avenues that may or may not have much relevance to anything in the end. The character of the boy Jack Peter is drawn well, though his parents seem like they could have used a bit more work (I know I just saw something really strange I can't explain, but you can't possibly have heard anything odd, honey, you nutty kook).

The ending is strange and twisty, and I can envision two reactions on the part of the reader: throwing up one's hands in exasperation, or thinking "ooh, very good!" I kinda did both.… (plus d'informations)

Having read all of two novels by Donohue now, with a third about to be teed up, I can say I really like this author. He's a smart cookie who has also got imagination and a sense of humor, and as a novelist at least he lives in a spirit filled world. He mixes absurdist whimsy with realist melancholy in a way that really appeals to me though I readily imagine not to everyone. Would it be absurd to compare his novels to the music of The Smiths here? Well, I won't yet, but an analogy is tickling the back of my mind.

In this novel the central character is really just a maypole, there to stand in the center while the action and colors swirl all around. Having just received a nasty skull fracture and passed into an uncertain realm outside of normal time, he is confronted in turns by seven women from throughout several centuries of American history with whom he apparently had meaningful and fraught relationships. Nonsensically, since we are clearly not in normal physical and temporal space here, each woman begins her story with an attempt to kill him, which provides some good fun. Their stories make up the majority of the novel… the realist melancholy married to the framework of absurd whimsy, the combination I so enjoy.

… (plus d'informations)

At times, this was a truly moving narrative. I found the alternation of narrative between Henry Day and the changeling Aniday one of the most compelling portions of the book. Henry and Aniday made great foils, speaking to what makes the human experience truly important and how social relationships, creativity and introspection each have integral roles. On the other hand, the book feels underdeveloped. Plot threads, characters, even themes are dropped completely, without a backward glance. At times the plot overwhelms any thematic development and inversely, especially at the end of the book, the reader is asked to endure some extremely contrived plots in servitude to hammered imagery.… (plus d'informations)

This book could have and should have been so much better. The story, and the setting were perfect, but the author managed to take these two positives and write a book that was boring. Horrible dialog, uninteresting characters, who don't behave like regular people, and the author feels the need to remind you how smart he is with his word choice. Reading the book I would have sworn it was 500 pages, not 273. It was that kind of boring. Oh and the big surprise ending didn't make up for the rest of the story and subplots that started and then went nowhere.
I could see this being made into a movie or a miniseries where with better writing and great atmosphere the story would be much better.… (plus d'informations)