The second of Burke's hot-sauce suspensers featuring Dave Robicheaux, protagonist of The Neon Rain (1987); this one is less frantic, more rooted in a specific (Cajun) culture. Here, Robicheaux has retired as a New Orleans homicide cop to run his own bait and boat-rental business in the Louisiana bayous of his childhood; he is newly (and happily) married to Annie (also out of Neon Rain). Dave has one problem: not alcoholism now (he is on the wagon), but his attraction to that "violent and aberrant world" where he once labored as a "bourbon-scented knight-errant." Opportunity knocks when a small plane carrying both Salvadoran illegals and a narcotics transporter crashes into the Gulf. Four of the passengers drown; the fifth, a little girl he calls Alafair, Dave rescues. She proves a boon to the childless Robicheaux marriage, but Dave's other trophy from the wreckage, an incriminating swizzle-stick wrapper, is a disaster, for it leads him back to the pursuit of lowlifes. Against his better judgment, and ignoring Annie's warning, Dave is soon tangling with drug-importer Bubba Rocque and his emissaries, and Annie is shot to death. Dave starts drinking again, then (implausibly) persuades the sheriff to hire him as detective. Eventually Dave tracks down and shoots Annie's killer to death in an exciting climax above a New Orleans laundry. Then Dave has the satisfaction of arresting the person who probably ordered Annie's execution, the lesbian wife of Bubba Rocque, after she has cut Bubba's throat with a cane knife. Despite careless plotting (constant but unresolved allusions to malfeasance by US Immigration), there is enough colorful action to keep readers turning the pages; but there is also altogether too much introspection by the self-hating, drowning-in-guilt Robicheaux. This talented writer could use a third-person narrator to keep the humorless Robicheaux in his place.
Pub Date: April 1, 1988
ISBN: 0743449193
Page Count: -
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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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