by Fay Weldon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1992
This wild and tonic assortment of tales arrives like a flotilla escorting the author's new novel, Life Force (see above), though many of the stories included originally appeared in British and American women's magazines like Lear's and Elle. Still, Weldon's no garden variety lady's writer—she thrives on turning knee-jerk feminism on its ear, subverting sentimentalism, and speaking in the voices of some really awful people whose impossible behavior proves perversely entertaining, and occasionally edifying. This time, there's the gorgeous young grad student in ``Ind Aff'' (short for ``inordinate affection'') who's intent on luring her prof away from his wife (``How can he possibly choose her while I was on offer?''); but then a close look at his thinning hair makes her decide to move on to greener pastures. In ``Who Goes Where?'' one of the world's most selfish women, a second wife who won't let her husband see her hated stepchildren on Christmas Day, suddenly becomes nicer—and much less interesting. Weldon's idea of a Thanksgiving story compares an overworked Hispanic maid with her brutally demanding boss lady, Honey Marvin (``...thin as a praying mantis; hold up her mean little hand to the light and you could see right through it''); and in ``A Visit from Johannesburg or Mr. Shaving's Wives,'' a profligate husband who's caused the suicides of three spouses articulates certain truths about marriage that are both bitter to swallow and wise. Even when Weldon turns her attention to an undeniably sympathetic type, like Ruby, the struggling single mom in ``In Search of Mother Christmas,'' it's with a glint in her eye, since Ruby gets tangled up for life in her own maternal instincts. Huzzah for Weldon, then—despite a few antiseptically contrived offerings herein. She's still one of the funniest, smartest iconoclasts around.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-14-014542-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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by Chinua Achebe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 23, 1958
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
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by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019
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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