Broadening and deepening the speculations on personal destiny and societal straitjackets touched upon in Violet Clay (1978), Godwin now offers her best work yet: a striking triptych of three contemporary women-in-transit—whose lives "continue to bounce off one another, adding new evidence. . . ." Leonard Strickland—gentle, concerned with Truth—briefly reflects on his life choice of "dealing justly" with family and self rather than manning barricades for humanity at large. . . just before his fatal heart attack. So his widow Nell and his two daughters cluster warily, abrasively, after his death, before spinning apart to new, more stable, curiously renewing passages. Cate, still the family irritant though nearly 40, has yet to produce a pearl of "accomplishment": married and divorced twice, jolting erratically from job to job teaching English (once fired for leading little girls to block the Lincoln Tunnel in protest against the Cambodia bombing), she scorns Success yet would be "outstanding." (A legacy from scrupulous, retiring Leonard?) And Cate ponders these matters as she becomes the lover of Roger Jernigan, a raw, pragmatic pesticide "baron" who lives in a castle; eventually, however, fearing the warm soup of protective security, she'll refuse marriage and have an abortion: "Keep a space ready for what you want" even if you don't now know what it is. Meanwhile, in contrast, younger sister Lydia's life is one of tight compartments (or what Cate regards as a "table-model kingdom"). Mother of two boys, Lydia hones close to her "public image": she sheds nice husband Max because of her lack of "sufficient enthusiasm"; she acquires a degree in sociology, a gifted black woman friend, and a malleable lover; and she'll ultimately star in a local TV cooking show. As Lydia tells her boys: "There are things that life expects from you and things you have a right to expect. . . . Get yourself organized." And as for mother Nell, she's loyal and compassionate with the sad, silly, brave old friends of her circle—and she is gradually weaned back to self and the "mellow ecstasy" of simply "being nobody." Finally, then, the three women—steamrolling Cate, secretly vulnerable Lydia coiled to strike, Nell bolstering and resignedly coping—have a climactic go-round at the family beach cottage. . . which will be symbolically destroyed by an untended fire. With rich, full portraits, seamless philosophic musings, and loamy village humor—a major novel from a talented writer really hitting her stride.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1981
ISBN: 0345389239
Page Count: 548
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1981
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
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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