In this elegant comedy edged with tragedy, an old poet's longing for the eponymous recognition, though mocked, is also...
Austrian writer Schnitzler (1862-1931; Desire and Delusion: Three Novellas, 2003, etc.) pokes fun at literary pretensions and ambitions in this short novella nearly lost in the Nazi book burning campaign of 1933 and published in the U.S. for the first time.
Eduard Saxberger, an elderly civil servant in Vienna, finds his poetry "rediscovered" by a group of young literary aspirants. Hailing him as Maestro and praising the single slim volume he published 30 years before, they welcome him to evening meetings at a local cafe. Saxberger, flattered, abandons the bourgeois acquaintances he now feels never really knew him in favor of young poets, a playwright, a frustrated novelist, a critic, and a "tragedienne" who flirts with him. Schnitzler paints a deft, playful, well-informed picture of the Viennese literary scene. Rereading his own work, Saxberger wonders "how the world could have passed so unheedingly over verses such as these." Naturally, the undiscovered geniuses of the Enthusiasm Society are insufficiently appreciated by the public. They hold the other patrons of the cafe in contempt for being successful. As the poet Meier explains, "Talentless...is what we generally call those who sit at different tables from us." The group decides to organize a "recital" in order to showcase their talent, and Saxberger agrees to write a new work for the occasion. His attempt to fulfill the part of the "venerable poet" and achieve recognition gives the book its dramatic tension. The night of the recital unfolds with convincing, and inevitable, melancholy. Each character is prey to his or her own egotism and insecurity. Saxberger imagines an "intoxicating, deafening success." Instead, mingled with the polite applause, he hears a pitying remark that brings tears of enraged hurt to his eyes, which the others misinterpret as proof of an excess of feeling. In the end, Saxberger goes back to his old life with the sense that he is "returning from a short, troublesome journey to a home that he had never loved."
In this elegant comedy edged with tragedy, an old poet's longing for the eponymous recognition, though mocked, is also understood.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68137-084-2
Page Count: 136
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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