An earnest if also lethargic footnote to a footnote of history. (This is the first of Knauss’s five novels to be translated...
Talk about 15 minutes of celebrity: here’s a novel based on German dramaturgy professor Knauss’s interviews with Gertrude Weisker, who spent the last several months of WWII with her cousin Eva Braun at Hitler’s mountain retreat.
Readers of the account will of course try to distinguish the made-up from what really happened to “Marlene.” At 20, she goes to stay with her lonely cousin Eva while Hitler is away pursuing the war. Though Marlene never actually meets the Führer, she does meet his henchmen Goring, Speer (who shows a brief but polite interest in the physics textbook Marlene is studying), et al. For over half the book, the young woman merely describes her life: the daily routine, her family, the way Hitler’s household was run. We learn that Marlene’s father was anti-Hitler, that Eva’s sister was married off to an SS higher-up, that Eva was totally devoted to her lover and oblivious of politics, accepting her status as mistress even though she yearned to be a wife, that Marlene listened secretly to radio reports from London, and—now—that she has carried into her old age a heavy, if largely secret, guilt about those months. The information is interesting (and avoids any taint of the self-serving), but it doesn’t coalesce into a real plot until the arrival of Mikhail. Having escaped from a work camp nearby, the 16-year-old happens into the teahouse, separate from the main building, where Marlene has been staying alone. The danger in Marlene’s decision to harbor a foreign escapee on Hitler’s turf is obvious to the point of melodrama (she takes an SS lover to maintain a cover). But the tale does spring briefly to a fictional life with the retelling of Mikhail’s imprisonment and escape, his survival instinct and emotional energy making a strong contrast with Marlene’s depressed if pretentious musings.
An earnest if also lethargic footnote to a footnote of history. (This is the first of Knauss’s five novels to be translated into English.)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-44905-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
