A romp through 33 stories of lesbian love but rather circular and expected.
Women in love: the good, the bad, and the still-figuring-it-out.
In her second short story collection and third book, Brazilian writer and translator Borges Polesso explores the depths of amorous relationships between women young and old, married and single, out and closeted, independent and cripplingly co-dependent—but first and foremost, in love. In “Aunties,” a pair of older women, both called “Tia” by the narrator, reveal they’ve been in love for decades and want to marry before they die. A married mother is having an unexpected affair in “Como Te Extraño, Clara” and is suddenly forced to confront her husband about this much-younger woman. In “Catch the Heart Red-Handed,” a young woman has been falling for a friend, and the two finally confront their mutual attraction at a messy college party. Borges Polesso’s characters struggle to move beyond their internalized heteronormativity, such as the soccer player in “Thick Legs” who realizes years later how many of her high school teammates are also lesbian or the woman in “My Cousin’s in Town” who tells her co-workers that her live-in girlfriend is her visiting cousin. Tension results as characters are forced to mask their intentions or to contend with other women who are concealing theirs. Borges Polesso splits the book into two sections: “Big & Juicy,” which includes 22 short stories, and “Short & Tart,” comprising 11 prose poems. After the first few stories the actions and entanglements of Borges Polesso’s characters begin to feel recycled while the poems offer welcome insight into their more abstract thoughts and feelings.
A romp through 33 stories of lesbian love but rather circular and expected.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1977-4
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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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