The combination of learned criticism, a failed appetite for life and a reluctance to do anything to promote delight or...
As Mediterranean countries export olive oil, Scandinavian ones disseminate gloom.
It’s a message reaffirmed in Norwegian scholar Solstad’s first U.S. publication, in which a high-school teacher of literature, Elias Rukla, experiences a pervasive alienation from modern culture while pondering the intricacies of somber masterpieces such as Ibsen's The Wild Duck. In the opening scenes, we see that Rukla is so badly in need of cheering up that every day he “put on a sparkling white shirt, which alleviated the distaste he couldn't help feeling at having to live in such a time and in such conditions”—conditions that include a lovely wife, a hearty breakfast and a well-paying job. It is evident that this cheerless fellow is going to be total frost in the classroom, and indeed his students, whom he bores and patronizes, are depicted in the last throes of tedium, a condition that, in a sort of onomatopoeia of ennui, goes on for 30 pages. So great is Rukla's frustration at their indifference that a broken umbrella after class is the last straw. In a frenzy of cursing and flailing, he breaks the umbrella, insults a blameless female student nearby and realizes only too late the irrevocable work-related consequences of his frenzy. As he walks home, Rukla considers his past life leading to this moment, a life devoted largely to Scandinavian literature, to his friendship with a brilliant philosopher he met in graduate school and to his marriage to that friend's former girlfriend, for whom, after decades together, he feels tenderness, estrangement and a faint distaste. This is an intelligent work but one that, like professor Rukla himself, never stoops to consider what an audience might enjoy.
The combination of learned criticism, a failed appetite for life and a reluctance to do anything to promote delight or enthusiasm makes this tale of civilization and its discontents uphill work. The stiff translation is no help.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-55597-446-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
IN THE NEWS
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
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
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