Darling

Two brothers, former Florida farmboys living together in a New York City apartment, face each other in a deadly rivalry, each man convinced that Darling--the cow back home that was the lover of both of them--loved him best

Tester's audacious first novel combines an expressionist style with a quasi- noir atmosphere in a startling story of sibling rivalry. The narrator, Bubba, is the younger of two brothers, both of whom have coupled with the eponymous Darling. The object of their love, and of their current acrimony is, however, a cow on the godforsaken family farm. As the novel opens, Bubba and elder brother Jeab,spok a Navy bomber pilot on leave, are quaffing beer and playing around with a loaded pistol. The narrative shifts back and forth through Bubba's childhood memories, amounting to a psychological tour of the young man's kinky past. Jeab has his own set of quirks, including pyromania, and the reader joins Bubba in wondering how he has sustained a naval career; Bubba chalks it up to a killer instinct and the desire to succeed. As the two drink their way through the early morning hours toward a cathartic dawn, the killer instinct comes upon Bubba too, and the gun becomes more of a factor in their twisted relationship. By then, the reader is ready for just about anything.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Debut novelist Tester sings a thinly storied but encrustedly lyrical song here to the southern gothic: about two brothers, Jeab and Baby, and their shared past--in which what figured most largely was their mutual lust for their milk cow, Darling. Fraternal jealousies and late hatreds shade in the picture, but the call of their cow for these two boys is the main point of contention. By comparison, neither Mama's previous love nor the carnal love delivered to both by girl-cousin Kay ever quite cuts it. As if this wasn't all silly and slight enough, Tester worsens matters with his relentless style: a kind of Hopkinsesque sprung- rhythm prose: ``Everything is grabby-like and pinching at my eyes. Everything's too big and glared to see, each noisy thing cupped in our kitchen mean with sitting here and fuss--I want to throw shit through the windows, crawl up tucked in Mama's apronned lap and rock off back to sleep.'' A cartoon done up in ruffles. Inauspicious. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sibling rivalry is often reconciled by time and distance, but brothers Jeab and Bubba tackle the problem head on, in a method born of their rural roots and Southern heritage, and pursue it to its logical conclusion. Faced off across a kitchen table sporting a loaded pistol and growing numbers of empty beer cans, they revisit long-held grievances and mind-embellished hurts, always confirming the relationship of elder to younger brother. They work through the issues of parental love and competition for the favors of cousin Kay. But they bristle with emotion over memories of "Darling," a beautiful Holstein that each has singled out from the dairy herd to receive the best and worst of their sexual longings. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, Darling is a fine first novel filled with sensual imagery and emotional turmoil from a first-rate young Southern writer. Readers will definitely want more.
- Thomas L. Kil patrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.