A trifle that at times has trouble filling its own pages and is often too coy for its own good. Probably more fun for those...
The latest from Goncourt-winning Echenoz (also see p. 143), starts well but ends up wan and thin.
In his 50s, Max Delmarc is a classical pianist in Paris, where he has problems few enough to keep under control, especially with the help of his tough personal manager, Bernie. One problem is stage fright (Bernie at times pushes him onto the stage), another is love of alcohol (Bernie steers him clear of bars before performances), and a third is Max’s old yearning for Rose, his one true love, who, through a misunderstanding (not a believable one), got away and now seems lost to him forever—though he still follows women if a glimpse tells him they might be Rose. And then there’s a fourth problem, announced on page one: “He is going to die a violent death in twenty-two days . . . .” This problem, it turns out, isn’t only Max’s, but the reader’s too, since when he does get his death, things go a-wandering. You see, he’s not really dead, or, he is, but that only means he wakes up in a huge clinic, gets surgically repaired, then waits in luxury for a week while it’s decided whether he’ll go to a beautiful but boring park or to “the urban zone,” which is—right, back to Paris, but with orders not to pick up his previous career and after cosmetic surgery to change his looks. A few things happen: Max does go back to music, doesn’t still like alcohol, is visited by Béliard, who was in charge of him at the clinic and is now having an emotional breakdown. There’ll be a twist regarding Rose at end.
A trifle that at times has trouble filling its own pages and is often too coy for its own good. Probably more fun for those who don’t yet know that death doesn’t hurt and that God is a skinny guy named Lopez.Pub Date: April 15, 2004
ISBN: 1-56584-871-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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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