A well-plotted, lyrical novel filled with the harsh emotions of a family torn apart by death.
In Zienty’s debut novel, a family struggles through loss and painful history, exploring the things that haunt us and help us remember, everything from artifacts to junk to treasures.
Claire Sokol is a mother drawn back to her hometown of Chicago to help her father sort through her grandmother’s belongings after her death. During the process, she finds artifacts that recall the memory of the boys that haunt her—her brother, Joey, and her cousin, Jamie. A museum curator, Claire knows the significance of relics—she saves photographs, vinyl records, a lock of hair in an old Marshall Fields box, a treasure trove of memories buried in a drawer. Aaron, Claire’s lover and the father of her daughter, Tally—a family unit to which Claire just can’t seem to fully commit—is an archeologist who says of artifacts and memories, “The questions are always the same: why is it there and what does it signify?” Zienty excavates a family story, carefully uncovering why Claire feels such anger toward her father, how Claire lost her brother and cousin, the latter having become her close comrade after Joey’s death, and why Claire feels guilt over her one-time admiration for Aunt Peach, Jamie’s captivating mother, in the face of her own mother’s death. The novel lyrically works at the tension between the need to save and the need to forget, coming to the realization that sometimes you need to do both in order to move on and try to forgive. Zienty clears away the layers of dust and grime with a steady hand, leaving the raw surface of emotion signified by belongings no longer buried and memories no longer forgotten.
A well-plotted, lyrical novel filled with the harsh emotions of a family torn apart by death.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463696245
Page Count: 393
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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