More exquisite and wrenching storytelling from Manhattan-based Irish author McCann (This Side of Brightness, 1998, etc.), who packs more passion and heartbreak into these two stories and novella, about the Troubles and children coping with hard times, than most writers can generate in books three times the length. The title story is a classic in contemporary Irish fiction: A farmer, desperate to save his favorite horse, whose leg is stuck between stones in a raging river, enlists help from his daughter, Katie, and from a passing truck'which, however, turns out to be full of British soldiers. The men rush to the rescue, and succeed in it, but though Katie invites them back to the house to dry off and have tea, there’s no joy in her father’s heart: On the mantel are photos of his wife and son, killed by an army truck in an incident for which no one was ever charged. “Wood” is far more subtle, about a boy who works with his mother preparing poles to carry banners in the Protestant parade, though he must do so furtively, knowing that his father, crippled by a stroke and unable to work, would never approve. The novella, “Hunger Strike,” also focuses on a boy: this one has moved to Galway with his mother, a singer who hopes to start anew in her hometown, away from the violence of the north and the lingering memories of her husband’s death. The Troubles haunt the two when the boy’s uncle, in prison as an IRA terrorist, joins the collective hunger strike and progressively weakens. The boy befriends an elderly Lithuanian couple who take a kayak on the ocean together daily, but the comfort he finds in paddling over the waves is not enough to soothe his rage at what is happening to his father’s brother. Masterful. These emotionally charged, beautifully controlled tales can only enhance McCann’s already considerable reputation.
Pub Date: March 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-6398-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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