One of modern literature's greatest curmudgeons appears to be going soft in his old age. There's still some of the characteristic Amis misanthropy and plenty of his mocking wit here, but this thoroughly enjoyable novel seems to suggest that, for the most part, all's right with an imperfect world. Much of the magnanimity emanates from one Harry Caldecote, a twice-divorced former librarian who lives with his widowed sister in London and dreams of a sinecure from the sultan of Brunei. Not without his faults, Harry often provides "helping hands for hopless people"—an assortment of friends and relations who have a difficult time fending for themselves. There's Bunty Streatfield, the lesbian daughter of Harry's second wife, who subjects herself to the cruelties of her violent, man-hating mate, Popsy, a nasty piece of work. Bunty's estranged husband, Desmond, pops in now and then, hopelessly in love with his wife despite Harry's somber advice. There's Fiona, the niece of Harry's first wife, a drop-down-drunk in her 30s who feels a victim of inevitable fate. And then there's poor old Freddy, Harry's henpecked brother, a gentle fool who lives in his own world, watched over by his shewish wife, Desiree. A harridan in the Amis tradition, Desiree is a "third-rate genteelist bullshitter" who accounts for her husband's every breath, supposedly on account of his fragile prostate. One by one, Harry gently helps them all mend their lives, even as his own takes a few unexpected turns—his longtime mistress returns to her husband after 19 years, and a real plum of a job in the US is his for the taking. A series of crises reminds Harry how much he likes the responsibilities at home as well as the companionship of his agreeable sister, Clare. What made Amis' Booker-winning The Old Devils (1987) a delight is also evident here—more about sex and booze among septuagenarians most of all. Lots of wonderfully gratuitous gibes at Amis' familiar betes noires brighten an already luminous work.
Pub Date: June 1, 1990
ISBN: 0671708163
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Summit/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1990
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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