The novel is overstuffed with food, which tends to water down what could be a strong story of a young woman fighting for her...
Unmarried at 35, chubby, and self-critical, Aruna Rai spends more time observing her life than living it. She pines after a man who is not interested in her, works at a job she is not passionate about, and soothes herself with the tastes of Indonesian cuisine.
An epidemiologist from Jakarta, Aruna travels with her colleague Farish across Indonesia to review cases of humans hospitalized with avian flu. She invites along two friends who will fill off-duty hours by sampling local cuisine with her. Bono, a chef, has a list of places and foods they must try. Nadezhda, a gorgeous food and lifestyle writer, has attitude to spare and philosophies to share. After speaking to hospital personnel and the patients’ families, Aruna suspects the cases of human bird flu are being faked. (But why? The story never quite pins it down definitively.) When her boss pulls her off the assignment, the four companions decide to complete the trip anyway. After all, there is so much food yet to be sampled. Despite long discussions about bird flu and food, the book is not really about either but rather a patchwork-quilt character study of Aruna. The reader-cum-therapist analyzes Aruna’s dreams (most chapters begin with one), hears her inner angst over Nadezhda’s beauty and her own plainness (“like champagne and popcorn”), and sees her fear of being alone (while at the same time she shuts herself off from people)—and tastes every bite of food she does. Aruna is likable, honest, bright, and full of wry humor. But as for the book having a strong arc, a steadily moving plot, a surprising climax before denouement...not so much.
The novel is overstuffed with food, which tends to water down what could be a strong story of a young woman fighting for her integrity despite setbacks in her social life and in the workplace. The strength of this novel is the heroine herself, the girl next door, a loyal friend, and a funny philosopher.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5039-3734-5
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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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