You often write on the topic of jealousy." So says a chance acquaintance to narrator I.B. Singer in one of the 20 stories here. And never before has the Singer preoccupation with sexual jealousy, or romantic disillusionment, seemed so intense (and so limiting) as it does in this new collection—which occasionally beguiles but mostly disappoints. In one tale after another, the same scenario—usually set in pre-WW II Poland—unfolds predictably: a man discovers that the woman he loves is unfaithful, a "whore" whose betrayal turns the man into a bitter cynic. Three stories offer a clinical variant on this model: the married man (perhaps latently homosexual) who encourages his wife's adultery. Even "The Last Gaze," about the funeral of an elderly man's middle-aged girlfriend, turns into another faithless-woman fable. And only one version—"The Bitter Truth," in which the husband remains blissfully ignorant about the wife's perfidy—provides enough texture or twist to sustain interest once the formula takes over. When Singer does explore other subject-matter here, the results are generally thin and anecdotal. In "Disguised," a wife discovers her ex-husband's sexual secret: territory covered more richly in earlier Singer stories. "The Missing Line" and "The Accuser and the Accused" offer strange, mildly intriguing happenings from the Yiddish Writers' Clubs of Singer's past. Quirks of character—obsessive gift-giving, blind passion—are the subtance of "Gifts" and "Dazzled." The supernatural turns up in three pieces: "The Jew from Babylon" is a miracle—worker losing his lifelong battle against the "Evil Ones"; "Sabbath in Gehenna" is a whimsical glimpse of political unrest among the sinners of Hell; the title story treats ancient Methuselah to hellish visions of corrupt, kinky Sodom—which make him welcome death. And "Logarithms" features the conflict between secular intellect and religious orthodoxy. Only one story, in fact, has the full-bodied flavor—if not the full development—of prime Singer: "The Hotel," about the meeting of two unhappily retired businessmen in Miami. Completely missing are the richly autobiographical excursions that gave some previous collections such mischievous bounce. So this is very much lesser Singer: always readable, of course, but rather monotonic and undernourished.
Pub Date: April 1, 1988
ISBN: 0140186980
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
