Title: DIVA
Author: Joseph Kinnebrew
Publisher: BookSide Press
ASIN: B0CDDZR8PH
Pages: 278
Genre: Fiction
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
Wow. A rose by any other name. The Gift Beyond Giving (in this case, a burned-out ex-soubrette) goes by many names: ‘Diva’, ‘Coquette’, ‘Princess.’ Some would call her ‘Barbie.’
She/It/They are many things. Diva is a crafty manipulatrix, getting long of tooth, 75 years old at last look, haggard of mien, counting more on her reputation and shrinking dowry now than on her drastically superannuated looks. Diva is someone’s – author Joseph Kinnebrew’s? – personal trip to hell and back. The book – a tasty mélange of fictional episodes and mixed voice narratives – is a very jaundiced look at a very crippled person who, Kinnebrew freely acknowledges elsewhere in the book, is based in good part on reality.
Other people are hell, according to Jean-Paul Sartre. Kinnebrew is likely to agree. His Diva avatar – mordantly sliced and diced, hashed and refried from multiple points of view – embodies all that is wrong with modern times. Diva is a diagnosed ‘ASP’ – Antisocial Personality. She cares little for the feelings of others. ASPs are concerned with one thing only – taking advantage of people, and acting out endless scenarios of hapless anger. Compassion is not one of her strong points.
Other literary lights come to mind, parallel to Diva. Philip Roth’s borderline personality-disordered harridan in When She Was Good is a memorable antecedent, as is Angela Carter’s Honeybuzz, an earlier incarnation of the cruel fatuous bully. There are discernible whiffs of Hunter Thompson, Rolling Stone magazine, and yes, mustard gas in here.
The writing is impressive. The writer clearly commands a vast storehouse of curios, of knowledge of rarified tidbits that language lovers like himself will surely treasure. Kinnebrew exercises a cinematic command of point of view with alternating voices, including dialogue from a psychiatrist’s office; raunchy near-dystopian scenes involving whips, chains, and mega-sleazy human interactions, all in the service of mindless worship of pleasure and of the moment.
These scenes – many of the scenes in this disturbing window on our time and our culture – are cautionary, sobering, even dystopian. Some trifle passing comment or artifact arrests our attention, on each and every page of this book, reminding us that we are living and playing in a house of cards; with a stiff wind coming through! If that weren’t chilling enough, consider the apocalyptic ending in this super brisk super intelligent novel: victims and victimizers get to reconsider their respective roles, as does the canny reader, who throughout all this is wondering, And how do I fit in? Problem is, dear readers, you do, I do, we all do.
