Disreputable lives raised to the level of Literature.
If John Dos Passos were writing today, had been influenced by Irvine Welsh, and had set Manhattan Transfer in Dublin, this might have been the result.
In a grand house outside Dublin lives Fidelma (“Delly”) Roche, widow of pharmaceutical tycoon Daniel Gilmore, who died in mysterious circumstances in a helicopter crash 20 years ago along with Delly’s lover, Frank Cullen, Gilmore’s corporate lieutenant. Now, aging Delly is dying of colon cancer (or is she only being drugged to keep her from finding out what’s happening on her estate?) and is being cared for by Kitty Flood, an obese, somewhat successful novelist and a lesbian, and Roche and Gilmore’s adopted son, Dr. George Addison-Blake, an American left on the doorstep of his namesake hospital as an infant suffering from an incurable disease that Daniel Gilmore’s research later cured. Meanwhile, in town, Joe Kavanagh, a radio talk show host whose wife has left him, taking their daughter, decides to upgrade his show and so instructs his young, gay, horny producer to find more offbeat guests. The sixth member of the ensemble here is the “rent boy” Kevin, whose brief internal monologues punctuate descriptions of the others’ actions and memories, including pornography, drug sales, murder, infidelity, insanity, ménages à trois, and futile attempts at being good neighbors. All are brought together when Barry invites Kevin to appear on Joe’s show, George kidnaps Kevin for his experiments in Gilmore’s underground lair, and Kitty discovers the lair and inadvertently frees Kevin, whereupon Delly finds him wandering about the house and calls the cops. Meanwhile, Barry and Joe have enlisted Kevin’s brother, a tough on the fringes of organized crime, who knows George through his drug and pornography dealing, to help find Kevin. Could all of this have been avoided if Daniel Gilmore had actually invented the memory-erasure drug he was said to be working on when he died? And did he invent it?
Disreputable lives raised to the level of Literature.Pub Date: June 16, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32769-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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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