A tale about the stories we let ourselves believe.
A family is pulled to Jewish mysticism—and away from each other—in this expansive saga about faith, love, and loss.
Samuel’s debut is divided into four sections. The first three, with different narrators, recount distinct eras in the Meyers' history. We meet Lev at age 11, a few years after the sudden death of his mother, a religious Jewish woman. Lev is acutely attuned to the emotions of others, especially of his sister and father. He begins exploring religion, building a friendship with his delusional, religious neighbor. The second section picks up the thread years later, gathering momentum through the eyes of his father, David. A religious studies professor, David has shunned religion as anything but an objective, academic study for years. After suffering a health scare, however, he's drawn to the powerful ideas of cabala. Samara’s section starts after another family loss. She's a college student living away from home. Though emotionally estranged from her father, she finds the same coping mechanism he had, embarking on a cabalistic mystical pursuit. The fragmented style is unified in the final section through an omniscient narrator, providing a full sense of the Meyerses and their neighborhood. The minor characters, ever present in the background, shine as their stories conclude powerfully. Often, mysteries that loom large for one narrator are answered logically by another. This level of coincidence could be deemed implausible by some readers, yet it fits in with the overarching theme of faith.
A tale about the stories we let ourselves believe.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-241217-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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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