A loose string of events that shows little evidence of much emotional investment, on Jungk’s part, in his characters,...
German-American novelist (The Perfect American, p. 244) and biographer (Franz Werfel, 1990) Jungk offers a disjointed tale about a mathematician by the name of Tigor, who, in troubled midlife, drifts on a series of fruitless, ill-connected adventures.
Having abandoned a mathematics conference in Trieste, and his teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania, Tigor ends up in the wilderness (“the plant room”), where he wanders harmlessly before resurfacing in the town of Belluno and being arrested for vagrancy. Dreamy and garrulous, Tigor makes friends wherever he goes, and newly met strangers happily tolerate his memories of growing up as the son of a famous opera singer. Tigor has a love for the theater and ends up in Paris to work as a rigger at the Odeon, while living at the home of his doting granduncle, Arnold Bohm. Tigor endures the riotous staging of Treplyov’s Masha and the insufferable preening of stars. But he’s no nearer to offering a justification for his “dereliction of duty toward his students.” Decamping to Moscow, he joins another mathematics professor and goes to Yerevan, capital of Armenia, where he becomes enthralled by a group of nationalists convinced that the remains of Noah’s Ark are still unclaimed on Mount Ararat. As a mathematician concerned with proving a hypothesis, Tigor (whose name seems to derive from a legendary Armenian king, Tigran II) is chosen for the mission of unearthing the remnants, thus proving the veracity of the Divine Books. Despite his misgivings, and after a spell teaching English to the children of Yerevan, he undertakes the task, and, in a bizarre close, he ascends the mountain without proper climbing gear or knowledge of the ongoing Kurdish civil war.
A loose string of events that shows little evidence of much emotional investment, on Jungk’s part, in his characters, providing the reader scant chance to warm up to his oddly named hero. The result: a listless, cold-eyed, quixotic romance that seems to suffer in translation.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59051-118-2
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Handsel/Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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