THE SHADOW OF WHAT WE WERE

Name: THE SHADOW OF WHAT WE WERE
Author: Luis Sepúlveda
ISBN: 978-1-60945-002-1

by Luis Sepúlveda & translated by Howard Curtis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2011

The past is present in this political novel, which requires greater knowledge of Chile’s politics and recent history than...

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Former Chilean revolutionaries reunite as bumbling conspirators in this novella by Sepúlveda (The Name of a Bullfighter, 1996, etc.).

The author, a former political prisoner in Chile now living in Spain, opens the book in 1925 with a bank robbery in Santiago, one committed in the spirit of Robin Hood (“This is a robbery, but we are not thieves”). The story then flashes forward to contemporary Santiago, for an incident that provides what little plot there is. Coco Aravena, a grandson of one of those original robbers, faces eviction from his apartment, because of, as his wife charges, his “laziness, depression, disillusionment, lack of ambition, contempt for work and possible lack of decency.” His wife angrily starts tossing their possessions onto the sidewalk, including a phonograph player that strikes a pedestrian and kills him. The dead man has a gun. Coco takes it. Someone else takes the dead man’s shoes. Coco schemes to invent a scenario in which their apartment was ransacked and whoever robbed them also killed the pedestrian. He also reunites with three former friends who had been militant supporters of Salvador Allende, until his overthrow by a coup in 1973 forced them underground, even into exile. They now look different and have different values. Some of this novel is very funny, such as a passing reference to “the strict morality of the anarchists” and a long soliloquy on the execrable quality of Chilean coffee. Some of it is serious, such as the invocation of the “immutable land of memory” and the admonition that Chileans need to “stop being wimps afraid of our own past.” But much of it plainly means more to the author and his Chilean readership than to those reading this English translation.

The past is present in this political novel, which requires greater knowledge of Chile’s politics and recent history than American readers are likely to bring to it.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-60945-002-1

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Europa Editions

Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

- IN THE NEWS
Chilean Author Luis Sepúlveda Dies of COVID-19

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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THE UNSEEN

by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

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Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.