The City

July 21, 2014
Bad things happen, but good things happen, too. That seems to be the message of bestseller Koontz's maudlin account of the life of Jonah Kirk, saddled by his parents with no less than seven middle names, each the last name of a famous jazz musician. The novel, which recounts the consequences of Jonah's encounters with a woman "who claimed she was the city," offers airy optimistic passages that won't persuade anyone acquainted with the harder side of life to always look on the bright side of it: "In fact, time teaches us that the musical score of life oscillates between that of Psycho and that of The Sound of Music, with by far the greatest number of our days lived to the strains of an innocuous and modestly budgeted picture." Jonah's relationships with his gifted, loving mother and with his absent, hustler father are clichés, and the concept that a city, which after all is made "great or not" by its people, takes the form of an attractive woman is too underdeveloped to have any charm.

June 15, 2014
Koontz (Innocence, 2013, etc.) genre-bends the metaphysical into a coming-of-age story, one measuring love's parameters.Honoring his racial and musical heritage, young Jonah bears seven middle names in homage to the African-American greats of swing music. He's the son of Sylvia Bledsoe Kirk, a singer gifted enough to have won scholarships, and Tilton Kirk, a rogue smooth enough to get Sylvia pregnant before she could get to college.There's an off-again, on-again marriage, Tilton fantasizing about celebrity chef-dom and Sylvia working at Woolworths and singing in nightclubs. The most constant presence in Jonah's life is grandfather Teddy Bledsoe, "a piano man," a big band veteran now working as a lounge pianist. The Beatles rock radio and records, but preteen Jonah is entranced with big band music, and he's a gifted pianist. The narrative covers the '60s shake-ups, including opposition to the Vietnam War. Tilton's skirt-chasing ensnares him in a bomb plot by two psychopaths posing as political agitators, putting Jonah and Sylvia in great danger. Koontz writes Sylvia and Teddy as too good to be true, and Jonah's too-wise childhood perspective seems overly influenced by Jonah-the-adult's narration. There are, nevertheless, affecting supporting characters, like the reclusive Mr. Yoshioka, once a Manzanar internee. The cardboard-cutout antagonists are not fully formed, but Koontz's exploration of the Bledsoes' familial bond gives the story heart. The action is predictable and less interesting than Koontz's discourses on swing music and his allusions to art, race and social mores. Koontz displays his usual gift for phrase-making-"moments when buildings and bridges, all of it, seemed like an illusion projected on a screen of rain." The setting is New York City, but the great metropolis plays no real part in the narrative other than its metaphysical manifestation in the form of "Miss Pearl," an amorphous character appearing at critical junctures like Cinderella's fairy godmother. Koontz offers a passable modern fairy tale about good and evil, love and loyalty.

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July 1, 2014
Self-described piano man Jonah Kirk, 57, recalls his most momentous years, 196567, in Koontz's somehow sunny new novel. That time began with his father's second desertion and the discovery of a plays-like-new Steinway at the community center, just in time for Jonah, gifted with an eidetic memory for melody, to learn music in earnest. It ended with nearly being killedtwiceby a cell of psychopaths masquerading as revolutionaries that includes his delinquent father as by far the least dangerous member. All along, a lovely woman who calls him Ducks and accepts his name for her, Pearl, comes to him, just a few times in all, to encourage him and alert him to forthcoming boons, like the Steinway, and perils. Meanwhile, he makes the best friends of his life, including the man who spearheads the fight against the cell, the boy who will become his lifelong musical colleague, and the first girl he ever adores. Bad as well as good things happen, and the thriller plot becomes secondary to warm character development as the book's prime attraction. High-Demand Backstory: The publicity push behind Koontz's new novel will be matched in public-relations success by the name recognition he so widely enjoys.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)