A melancholy look at dashed illusions.
A man reflects on the crime that sent him to prison—and on his uncertain future.
Turkish author Dervis’ novel, first published in 1957, is now available to Anglophone readers in Freely’s tautly paced translation. The title character is a former medical student named Vasfi who’s leaving prison after having spent more than 12 years there, sentenced for his role in a man’s death. Initially, his mood upon reentering the wider world is bleak: “To look at the people around him and think of himself as a murderer was a torment he could barely endure.” Eventually, he thinks back over the events that sent him to prison, which related to his infatuation with Zeynep, a woman who lived in his neighborhood. He longed to be with her, but fate had other plans, and she ended up engaged to his great-uncle. When he confronted her with his feelings, she rejected him and went on to reveal that there were aspects of the situation—including the fact that she had previously been married and divorced, and had a 4-year-old child—of which he was completely unaware. His unresolved feelings remained an issue, however, and he eventually got into a fight with his cousin Nuri when Nuri claimed that Zeynep had been unfaithful to her new husband. That fight resulted in Nuri’s death and Vasfi’s prison term. In her introduction, Freely accurately describes this book as “a social-realist page-turner.” It isn’t until the long flashback has ended that the book takes a more philosophical turn, as an increasingly destitute Vasfi wanders through the city overcome by desperation and self-loathing. And he gradually realizes something: “His Zeynep—the incomparable Zeynep of his youth—no longer existed.” It’s not until after this moment that he can find a path toward redemption.
A melancholy look at dashed illusions.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781892746931
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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