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THE NAKED PIONEER GIRL

Outrageously funny for the first few chapters, but wears very thin and becomes quite tedious in short order: Kononov’s humor...

Over-the-top first novel from Russia that butchers an entire stockyard full of sacred communist cows in its account of the military and erotic exploits of a 15-year-old girl during the Siege of Leningrad.

Fifteen years ago a publication like this would have been printed on bootleg mimeographs and probably have earned its author a nice long stay in some Siberian gulag. Today, however, it seems more like an exercise in cheap laughs. There isn’t much of a story—at least not much of a coherent one. Our heroine is the dauntless Maria “Midge” Mukhina, a teenaged Young Pioneer (the Soviet equivalent of the Hitler Youth) who longs so desperately to serve in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) that she forges the necessary papers and enlists as a machine-gunner in the Red Army. Midge is the embodiment of all the socialist virtues extolled in the propaganda pieces of the time: daring, selfless, obedient, and absolutely confident in the leadership of Comrade Stalin. So zealous is she for the defense and triumph of the People’s Revolution that she’s honored by the great Marshall Zhukov, the Defender of Moscow, with a secret mission that will make her a Hero of the Soviet Union—posthumously, of course. How has Midge earned such a commission? On her back, mostly, attending to the needs of all the men in her regiment (officers getting priority, naturally) night after night for the last several years. But now Midge’s nighttime duties take on a new form, since she has found a way to leave her body and fly, stark-naked, through the skies over Leningrad each night. Naturally, this strikes fear into the hearts of the Germans, whose panzers are no match for the airborne nude nymph of the Red Army.

Outrageously funny for the first few chapters, but wears very thin and becomes quite tedious in short order: Kononov’s humor depends on familiarity with the pomposities of Soviet mythology that will be lost on most Americans.

Pub Date: June 1, 2004

ISBN: 1-85242-835-X

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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