Antrim’s novels (The Hundred Brothers, 1997, etc.) are so hilariously inventive, so audacious, and so full of a unique blend of ideas and pratfalls that it’s hard to find another contemporary writer to compare him to: Pynchon on lithium? Barthelme on laughing gas? Tom, a psychoanalyst from the prestigious Krakower Institute, decides to gather his other teaching colleagues together for a series of informal suppers to share experiences, gossip, and of course new ideas about “the seemingly endless task of reconciling classical metapsychology to our particular branch of Self/Other Friction Theory.” And what less threatening and more informal venue could he choose than the “Pancake House & Bar”? Among Tom’s colleagues are Manuel Escobar, a suave “Kleinian” therapist who may be suffering from ethical vagueness; the bumptious, uncouth Richard Bernhardt, a group counselor and Tom’s enemy; and the warmly supportive Maria. Matters turn strange when Tom, in an attempt to lighten everyone’s mood, decides to instigate a food fight with a nearby table of prissy child psychologists. The disapproving Bernhardt locks him in a bear hug—and somehow thrusts him into an out-of-body experience. For the rest of the night a part of Tom’s consciousness hovers near the ceiling of the pancake house, watching and commenting on the increasingly acrimonious and libidinous pursuits below. The conversations of Tom’s colleagues are rendered in a pitch-perfect parody of psychoanalytic groupspeak, while contrasting nicely with the heated debates over theory and practice are all-too-fleshly appetites and resentments. As matters deteriorate, the situation becomes more and more absurdly hilarious; no one writes better slapstick than Antrim. Tom’s fate is both inevitable and moving. A hilarious send-up of psychoanalysis and a deeply original meditation on the nature of identity. Antrim’s distinctive, high-octane comedy of ideas may prove dizzying for some. Those who persevere will find themselves, like Tom, seeing matters in a distinctly new way.
Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40822-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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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