Probably few people would question that Nabokov is the greatest living writer and he reached his apogee with Pale Fire and Lolita. This new novel, his first in ten years, intended to deal with the problem of time which has always been a paramount concern and preceded by much intimidating advance commentary, is pure Nabokov. All his readers will recognize the particular specifics of his apparatus. That is if they get past the opening chapters with their impedimenta which Nabokov himself recognizes ("The modest narrator has to remind the rereader of all this"). Rereading entails not only impenetrable sentences but also the entangling introduction of characters: two sisters Aqua and Marina (a portmanteau name) who marry two cousins of the same name, namely Walter D. Veen with alternate appellations (Demian or Dementius or Demon). Their progeny, that is Marina's, will be the central characters of the book: Van Veen who is presumably Aqua's child (Aqua dies with the delusion-allusion that he is not hers as indeed he isn't) and Marina's two legitimate little girls, Ada (Ardor if pronounced in Russian) and Lucette. This takes place in the kingdom of Terra (America) and more specifically on the family estate, Ardis, where the "romantic siblings" Van and Ada enjoy each other immoderately as youngsters. A little later they will be joined by the lewd Lucette, a paranymph, but in spite of endless tumbling together, it will be Ada that Van loves all of his 97 years and to whom he comes back again and again and finally permanently. To return to the theory of time with which the book essentially deals (however rakish, or raffish, the fictional substructure) Nabokov discusses it at length (and finally in a closing essay) via Veen who makes it his lifework (along with dreams and dementia): time as memory and memory in the making, time as perception, time as a "continuous becoming" and a threatening disintegration into "everlasting nonlastingness" or oblivion, time and space, space and time with the defeating recognition that "I am because I die." But as Ada says, "We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time." . . . And to return to the above mentioned apparatus: it's all there—the wordmanship and the polylingual punning (Aujourd'hui— heute-toity); the entomological and botanical addenda (maidenhair and butterflies); and the particular pleasures of little girls although, as in Lolita, the erotica is a dalliance of the intellect rather than the flesh. But as compared to the earlier books, there is little passion or compassion: some of it is dazzling, much of it is enervating. And as for that general reader, Caveat caviar.
Pub Date: May 5, 1969
ISBN: 0679725229
Page Count: 626
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969
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
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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