History and the dream interpenetrate in this outsized novel which summons into fevered, hallucinatory existence the Spain that conquered the author's native Mexico. It is like a movie by Bunuel unreeling marvels, cruelties, compulsions—a Buneul, who had been given unlimited funds by some mad mogul. Fuentes' labyrinth starts in Paris in 1999, when the Seine is boiling, the Louvre has turned to crystal and the Eiffel Tower to sand. Flagellants parade the streets. On a bridge a man meets a woman with tattooed lips; he falls into the river; the story shifts back to Spain on the eve of the New World's discovery, it is a Spain of blood, torture, religious and sexual obsessions, ruled by El Senor, who hates life (God's greatest sin was the creation of man) and has immured himself in a necropolis. His mother consorts with the cadaver of her husband. Three bastard sons of El Senor's father by different mothers appear and reappear: they are identical, down to their six-toed feet and the red crosses that stain their backs. One is a pilgrim who ventures to the Mexico of human sacrifice, as cruel as Mother Spain. The second is Don Juan, mistaken by nuns for their husband, Christ. The third is an idiot wedded to a flatulent dwarf. A peasant girl, Celestina, reappears as a witch and then as a procuress. Suddenly the scene shifts to the future: Mexico under bombardment by North American Phantoms; then full circle back to a dying Paris. At the end the narrator has an interesting form of sexual intercourse with himself, spawning future generations. History is circular and the past, present and future happen simultaneously. The fusion of myth and reality that occupied Fuentes in A Change of Skin (1967) is carried to obsessive length. Brilliant passages and exciting adventures occur among arid wastes of metaphysical speculation. The prose is incantatory but ultimately exhausting.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1976
ISBN: 1564782875
Page Count: 820
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1976
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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