Lovely and lyrical—a celebration of language and another virtuoso performance from a writer who does indeed deserve to be...
Elegant, lapidary stories that beg Ann Patchett’s question in the introduction: “Why isn’t Edith Pearlman famous?”
Pearlman (Love Among the Greats, 2002, etc.) is a master of the form, without doubt, though, like V.S. Pritchett, with whom she shares several points in common, there is nothing at all flashy about her fictions. Her stories are lush, at least as compared to the aridities of all those Raymond Carver–inspired tales of the last quarter-century, and they range the world in search of reports about the human condition. Often Pearlman writes of misplaced and displaced people, whether Jewish refugees from World War II–era Europe or characters who aren’t comfortable inside their own skins; often her characters can barely communicate, mistrustful of and limited by language (“On the fourth Thursday in August the youngest grandchild at last deigned to speak the language she had long understood, and demanded, in grammatical English, to be taken with the other kids to a traveling carnival”); it’s not uncommon for one of Pearlman’s players to be reaching for a dictionary somewhere along the way. Pearlman’s characters, too, are often layered in symbolism without being mere ciphers, as with the protagonist of “The Noncombatant,” a note-perfect evocation of the moment Americans on the home front learn that the war in the Pacific has ended—which does not mean, not by any stretch, that the goddess Eris has left the earth (“He felt his dying staunched by her wrath, her passionate unsubmissiveness”). Most of these stories are earnest, often even grim, though Pearlman is not without a sense of humor that mostly manifests in giving taunting names (“the Sisters Scrabble and the geezer”) to some of her foils. But humor is not what these stories are about; instead, Pearlman favors the startling moral problem (what should we think of a travel writer who does not travel, but invents places?) and the poetic meditation on family history and the passage of time.
Lovely and lyrical—a celebration of language and another virtuoso performance from a writer who does indeed deserve to be better known.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9823382-9-2
Page Count: 375
Publisher: Lookout Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
IN THE NEWS
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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