One (many, actually) of the world’s great stories, in immensely attractive and reader-friendly form. Essential reading.
Western readers should welcome this “huge panorama of conflict and epic adventure,” announced as the fullest prose translation yet of the 11th-century national epic of Persia (now Iran).
Written over a span of 35 years by the accomplished poet Ferdowsi, it’s a lavish tale based on earlier oral epics and a royally commissioned national history, composed in some 60,000 couplets (which compare roughly with 100,000 lines of English verse). The book begins as a conflation of indigenous myths and legends, then traces several centuries’ worth of royal reigns (hence its subtitle), and concludes following the seventh-century Arab invasion of Persia that toppled the long-lived Sasanian dynasty and irreversibly altered a proud ancient culture. The poem is thus simultaneously a chronicle of kingship (which includes very pointed references to monarchs’ responsibilities to their subjects); a saga of complex relations between rulers and the military men who serve (and, sometimes, oppose) them; and a vast succession of stories of power struggles and portraits of heroes and villains, humans and supernatural foes, and families and regimes divided. Its choicest contents include: the tale of introverted Kay Khosrow’s troubled reign and eventual abdication; the adventures of Seyavash (a kind of Persian Marco Polo); the mixed morality deployed by royal consort Shirin (a classic survivor, against formidable odds); the story of Iraj, which partially echoes that of Old Testament hero Joseph; the conquests, and eventual death, of the invader Sekandar (i.e., Alexander the Great); and the richly detailed history of soldier-hero Rustum (known to us through Matthew Arnold’s narrative poem “Sohrab and Rustum”). The latter is a true tragic hero (his “Seven Trials” closely parallel the Labors of Hercules), and the stories in which he is central achieve thrilling intensity and resonance.
One (many, actually) of the world’s great stories, in immensely attractive and reader-friendly form. Essential reading.Pub Date: March 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03485-1
Page Count: 928
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. 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. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. 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. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. 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. 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. 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. 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. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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