The collected short fiction of the great Russian-born writer (1899—1977) who became a master of fiction in three languages and whose imposingly irascible presence on the 20th-century literary scene has perhaps obscured full recognition of his genius as symbolist, savant, and storyteller. There's little here that can be called apprentice work, even among the earliest of this rich volume's 65 stories, a gathering that ranges from the early 1920s through mid-1950s and assembles the contents of four previously published volumes plus 13 uncollected stories. Literary influences are only intermittently blatant (e.g., in the Chekhovian "Christmas" and Gogolian "Razor," and in "Bachmann," a disturbingly enigmatic account of a thwarted romance that reads like an early Thomas Mann story). Fantasy and supernaturalism are strongly present in such accomplished and eerie pieces as "Lik," "Tyrants Destroyed," and "The Vane Sisters," the latter being perhaps the most archly self-indulgent ghost story ever written. What may surprise many readers is the relative scarcity of tales in which Nabokov's notoriously Olympian sensibility is clearly revealed. Only in the icy "A Dashing Fellow" (whose lustful protagonist withholds from his conquest the news of her father's death) and the equally mordant "Details of a Sunset" do we feel a judgmental or condescending authorial presence. The many stories dealing with Russian emigres in Europe seeking aesthetic and romantic fulfillment, include several of Nabokov's most affecting: "The Fight," "A Guide to Berlin," and "A Russian Beauty" are prominent examples. Best of all, there's "The Potato Elf," a weird, troubling story of a fatal love triangle featuring preternaturally vivid characters and replete with ingenious sexual symbolism. The products of an incomparably rich imagination, these 65 wonders comprise a virtual education in how fiction—well, ought to be written. An indispensable book.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-58615-8
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
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
© 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.
