Bring on the violins: a hopelessly two-dimensional story rendered more so by its sentimentality.
Trinidadian-born Guy (The Sun, the Sea, and a Touch of the Wind, 1995, etc.) offers an excruciatingly atmospheric retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
On a Caribbean island known as Jewel of the Antilles, the young orphan Désirée Dieu-Donné must struggle to find her way in a world that has no place set aside for her. Like just about everyone in her village, she works in the fields of Monsieur Galimar, the local grand homme who owns all the land nearby, but she dreams of greater things. One day she discovers another grand homme, the young Daniel Beauxhomme, half-dead on the road from a car crash, and she takes him home to nurse him back to health. Before he’s fully recovered, however, his wealthy father arrives and makes him return home. Daniel is still in bad shape, though, as is Désirée—who has fallen in love with him. Determined to find him, she sets off on a long journey to the grand seaside hotel owned by Daniel’s family. There, she discovers him, still teetering on the brink. Désirée knows a great deal about the secret charms and potions of the backwoods healers, however, and in no time at all she has restored him to health. Daniel’s family is grateful, and Daniel himself more than grateful: he’s fallen in love with Désirée. Soon she’s living in the hotel as his mistress, tended to by an army of beauticians, couturiers, and servants. But her happiness is short-lived: Daniel’s family expects him to marry, after all, and a peasant girl with no family or dowry doesn’t exactly fill the bill. A more suitable match is arranged with the daughter of Monsieur Galimar. Désirée is cast out, forced to watch her lover’s marriage from outside the church.
Bring on the violins: a hopelessly two-dimensional story rendered more so by its sentimentality.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-56689-131-0
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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