Inventive if not always complete.
The veteran Canadian novelist and poet follows up her American debut (Tracing Iris, 2003) with stories that show narrative aptitude, a degree of experimentation, and a proclivity for the poetic turn.
The centerpiece is the title novella, really more like a collection within the collection, following a pair of sisters through five pieces, some of which appeared individually in literary journals. In “Versions,” family stories about younger sister Claire being held dangerously out a window by older sister Marcia achieve the mythic in their various retellings; in “The Savage God” (vide A. Alvarez), both girls are in Sylvia Plath mode, and they eventually head for a lake with a boy who might not return; “Family Reunion” recounts a dinner when the sisters are much older, when all that old self-destructive behavior provides material for members of the family to humiliate each other; “Inside Editions” follows Claire as she visits Marcia in early middle age, on the occasion of Marcia’s first extramarital affair; and eventually the family (“Thicker Than Water”) gathers once again for a final vacation on the occasion of the parents’ 45th anniversary. Gunn demonstrates versatility throughout the rest of the collection, though some of her smaller short-shorts might be more accurately described as false starts than actual prose poems. “Los Desperados” is perhaps the finest of the bunch, about a couple on the rocks who return to the place of their original happiness, a honeymoon in Mexico, only to find that the place is as changed as they are, and to happen upon a swinging Mexican general with designs to pry them apart for good. Another winner is “Fugue,” about a dead relationship that finds its best metaphor in its seemingly musical repetition of a cat torturing a mole on a balcony.
Inventive if not always complete.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2003
ISBN: 1-55192-566-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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