A warm-up volume for the “collected stories” that will eventually, inevitably follow.
An eclectic selection of shorter fiction from a veteran author more renowned for his novels.
Following what was widely considered one of his better recent novels (Homer & Langley, 2009), the New York writer best known for his interweave of fact and fiction in Ragtime (1975) does the authorial equivalent of a closet cleaning with a dozen stories that find him adopting a variety of narrative voices and perspectives. Seven of the stories originally appeared in the New Yorker, and one of those (“Heist”) was later incorporated into the novel City of God (2000). Another, “Liner Notes: The Songs of Billy Bathgate,” reads like an addendum to Billy Bathgate (1989), like the notes to a collection of songs by the protagonist, each a paragraph long (though one paragraph extends over five pages), likely inscrutable to those unfamiliar with the novel. Yet there is plenty of first-rate work here to please Doctorow fans and others who appreciate a well-told story. Many of them have a spiritual dimension, and the most provocative of these is “Walter John Harmon,” the testament of a lawyer involved with a religious cult and his growing suspicions that the unlikely prophet has designs on the narrator’s wife. The shortest story, “Willi,” ranks with the most powerful, as an older man recalls a boyhood experience in which a Whitmanesque rapture over the joys of being alive in nature proceeded to a discovery of his mother’s affair, and the uneasy mixture of betrayal and desire his mother’s sexuality elicited. “Jolene: A Life” strays far from Doctorow’s usual territory, in its narrative of a poor Southern girl whose attractiveness toward the wrong kind of men proves a curse. And while the concluding title story would seem to place the fiction in more familiar terrain, its Manhattan metaphysics are more reminiscent of Paul Auster’s New York than Doctorow’s.
A warm-up volume for the “collected stories” that will eventually, inevitably follow.Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6963-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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
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
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