A compelling existential mystery, on one level a sort of Catalan answer to Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, with a...
Beguiling, odd story of what happens to a small town when death pays an unexpected visit.
Vidreres isn’t much of a town, a forgettable spot after a blind hill that opens onto a striking view of the “luminous teeth of the Pyrenees.” Like the spectral village at the center of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, it’s full of ghosts—but also the usual human preoccupations of sex, power, betrayal, poverty, the sight of money moving “between men like a gust of wind.” Catalan author Sala makes this tiny place his own, populating it with a cast that revolves around two unfortunate dead teenagers, Jaume and Xavi Batlle, whose little Peugeot goes flying off into a tree one fateful Saturday. The crash that kills the youngsters is a mystery, though one villager, better educated than most, speculates that it’s no accident; as he tells a brawling truck driver who’s no stranger to mayhem, “A lot of accidents are suicides and no one realizes.” Sometimes an accident is just an accident, true, but this “death that doesn’t let death live” changes the lives of everyone in Vidreres. One is Iona, a teenage girl who might easily have been in the car with the boys had she accepted Jaume’s invitation to go with them that evening; now she’s left to wrestle with survivor’s guilt, because while a big-city girl might have gone to a psychiatrist or grief counselor, “in Vidreres, because of the way Vidreres was, she would have to deal with it herself.” Tough guy Miqui is no exception: he bluffs and blusters, but he’s touched, too, as is the milquetoast bank manager whose great act of midlife-crisis reconciliation is to sneak out to see a hooker and then ponder the consequences: “Had the dead boys been released from inside him, during his orgasm?” It's a fruitful question, one of many that Sala poses.
A compelling existential mystery, on one level a sort of Catalan answer to Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, with a closing as haunting as a tale by Poe. Altogether brilliant.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-931883-49-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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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