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. 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. 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. 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. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. 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. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them-and they kill him. 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. The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. Can it be that our hero is growing up? Well, yes: Gabriel eventually drops his intended suicide, along with several other affectations of youth, though Pierre does feel obliged to provide an over-the-top finale involving fireworks both gastronomic and incendiary.Ĭonsiderably more mature than its predecessors, and just as scathingly brilliant with words, but this author is definitely an acquired taste. Even as he enthusiastically participates in the excesses of Didier’s right-hand man Thomas, who’s arranging the bash in the bunkers, Gabriel is developing a guilty conscience about the whole affair. Things get even crazier when Gabriel actually does discover the perfect spot for a decadent feast: miles of tunnels and bunkers built for the Third Reich underneath Tempelhof Airport. So off Gabriel goes to Berlin, where his detested father had a club in the 1990s. And the only way to do that is to convince Didier, who makes a fortune creating one-of-a-kind banquets for rich thrill-seekers, that Gabriel can connect him to a unique venue. The only way Gabriel can spring him is by getting Smuts’ shadowy “sponsor,” Didier Le Basque, to pull strings. The customer winds up in the hospital, and Smuts in jail. Unfortunately, once Gabriel gets done loading him up with coke and booze, Smuts recklessly takes the challenge of a customer who wants the fish’s extra-toxic liver. Soon he slips away for a final pre-suicide bacchanal with his best friend Smuts, who’s working at an ultra-exclusive Tokyo restaurant that serves poisonous (and illegal) fugu to those who can afford it. Just checked into rehab by his father, Gabriel puffs defiantly on cigarettes while ranting about capitalism and messing with the staff. Readers may not feel too terrible about that, since Gabriel, like Pierre’s protagonist in Vernon God Little (2002), is initially as obnoxious as he is motor-mouthed. Man Booker winner Pierre ( Ludmila’s Broken English, 2006, etc.) continues on his polarizing way with another extreme adventure, this one undertaken by a narrator who plans to kill himself.
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