A compelling novel by one of the masters of contemporary fiction.
A novel of substance about friendship, philosophy and politics set in the “thousand-headed hydra of Mexico City” from the prolific pen of distinguished man of letters Fuentes (The Death of Artemio Cruz, 2009, etc.).
The author immediately elevates the status of his characters—in fact almost to mythic proportions—in the sheer act of naming them. Narrator Josué Nadal recounts his close, almost inseparable, relationship with Jericó (part of whose mystery involves having no surname) but starts with an unexpected twist—Josué has been executed, his head severed from his body, so he begins his narration as literally a disembodied voice. As adolescents their lives become entangled with that of Errol Esparza, whose arrogant, distant and brutal father gives Errol something concrete to rebel against. Josué recounts the major events of his life, including his seduction by a beautiful nurse and his tutelage in philosophical inquiry, but most importantly his extraordinarily intense friendship with Jericó. They share an interest in profound philosophical questions and are particularly enamored by Nietzsche and Spinoza, and they also share sexual experiences with an infamous prostitute with a bee tattoo on her buttock. As they grow older, they drift apart—Josué becomes involved in law studies, and Jericó cryptically disappears for a while, presumably traveling abroad. In the meantime Josué becomes romantically involved with several women, the drug-addled Lucha Zapata and the stern but gorgeous Asunta Jordán, aide to Max Monroy, a mysterious and enormously rich businessman who is powerful, self-confident and presumptuous enough to treat with contempt Valentín Pedro Carrera, the president of Mexico. Josué’s erstwhile friend becomes an enemy of the state, so much so that Josué refers to him as “Jericó Iscariot,” and their friendship/brotherhood symbolically shifts from Castor and Pollux to Cain and Abel. Throughout the complex narration, Fuentes moves his characters from whorehouse to prison house to boardroom with ease and assuredness.
A compelling novel by one of the masters of contemporary fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6880-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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