Elegant and elegiac stories that speak to loss, redemption, and endless sorrow.
A collection of thematically linked tales of Rwandan life in a time of ethnic conflict.
Originally published in French in 2010, these short stories partake of both fiction and memoir. The title story centers on a constant of refugee life, for Igifu is hunger personified, “given to us at birth like a cruel guardian angel.” Igifu is kept at bay only by food, of course, and while the parents of the Tutsi narrator did so with abundant milk, now the cows are dead, and, as in Mukasonga’s real life, “we’d been abandoned on the sterile soil of…Igifu’s kingdom.” Although starving, her mother worries that the neighbors will learn that they’ve been reduced to eating wild radishes, “no food for Tutsis,” though she’s not too proud to turn to those neighbors when the narrator faints from hunger and approaches the gates of death itself. Mukasonga then shifts genders, relating in a man’s voice the cultural realities of a people who measure wealth in cattle (and for whom “cattle stealing was nothing short of a sport”) but are reduced to the shameful condition of raising goats. In that story, which spans decades, a young cowherd grows to manhood in exile while his father finally saves enough to buy a cow‚ a trajectory interrupted by the next spasm of ethnic violence: “The genocide did not spare my father Kalisa, or my mother, or all my family, any more than the other Tutsis of Nyamata. I’ll never know what name he gave his one cow. I don’t want to know if the killers feasted on her.” In another story, a grown-up woman, beautiful, proud, and devoted to fine clothing and makeup, paints herself into an existential corner: The object of a French colonist’s desire until independence, then the mistress of a wealthy, politically powerful entrepreneur in Kigali, she becomes just another refugee, reduced to selling herself in the camps. Reminiscent at times of Iris Origo, Mukasonga writes with world-weary matter-of-factness, her stories understated testimonials to the worst of times.
Elegant and elegiac stories that speak to loss, redemption, and endless sorrow.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-939810-78-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
