Painter-storyteller Ari's first novel is a true original, with roots in Jewish mysticism and Yiddish folklore: the picaresque tale of an 18th-century Polish shoemaker who follows his dreams no matter how grave or absurd they become. His parents' deaths in a Warsaw pogrom leave Meir at the mercy of his sister Yetta (who elopes as soon as he's old enough to fend for himself), his uncle Mottle, and Mottle's wife Flanka, a whirlwind cleaner obsessed by a mystic vision that commanded her simply, ``Boil!'' Betrothed by Rabbi Zaydle with the rabbi's servant Rachel- -it's a perfect match: she was orphaned in the same pogrom—Meir nonetheless gets the idea of leaving town to go seek the Baal Shem Tov, the revered mystical teacher of Medzhibozh. (Rachel's reaction to her departing fiancÇ: ``You're inventing your life. How exciting!'') Along the way there'll be run-ins with the fishmonger of Lublin, who'll answer any question if you buy a fish (``One fish, one question''); with the clay man of Pupekle, cursed, like Meir, by the divine brand that governs his movements; with Sarah, the candlemaker's daughter in Lvov who makes Meir forget about Rachel; and with Meir's crazy old sidekick Israel, who's convinced that he's invisible and that Meir's a shipmaker. It's clear what's going to happen when Meir finally meets the Baal Shem Tov, but Ari's bag of tricks and transformations is still bulging, as Mottle and his new wife turn into a tree, Luckshinkopf the fool wastes away ``until he falls entirely into the pail,'' and Meir, whose shoes for all his customers have increasingly shown minds of their own, passes the time after his return to Warsaw building a boat in the shape of a giant shoe. Extravagant, charming, and deeply serious in its matter-of-fact mingling of moral history, prophecy, and magic.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-939010-38-0
Page Count: 244
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.
An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).
Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The mother of all presidential cover-ups is the centerpiece gimmick in this far-fetched thriller from first-novelist Baldacci, a Washington-based attorney. In the dead of night, while burgling an exurban Virginia mansion, career criminal Luther Whitney is forced to conceal himself in a walk-in closet when Christine Sullivan, the lady of the house, arrives in the bedroom he's ransacking with none other than Alan Richmond, President of the US. Through the one-way mirror, Luther watches the drunken couple engage in a bout of rough sex that gets out of hand, ending only when two Secret Service men respond to the Chief Executive's cries of distress and gun down the letter-opener-wielding Christy. Gloria Russell, Richmond's vaultingly ambitious chief of staff, orders the scene rigged to look like a break-in and departs with the still befuddled President, leaving Christy's corpse to be discovered at another time. Luther makes tracks as well, though not before being spotted on the run by agents from the bodyguard detail. Aware that he's shortened his life expectancy, Luther retains trusted friend Jack Graham, a former public defender, but doesn't tell him the whole story. When Luther's slain before he can be arraigned for Christy's murder, Jack concludes he's the designated fall guy in a major scandal. Meanwhile, little Gloria (together with two Secret Service shooters) hopes to erase all tracks that might lead to the White House. But the late Luther seems to have outsmarted her in advance with recurrent demands for hush money. The body count rises as Gloria's attack dogs and Jack search for the evidence cunning Luther's left to incriminate not only a venal Alan Richmond but his homicidal deputies. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper climax provides an unsurprising answer to the question of whether a US president can get away with murder. For all its arresting premise, an overblown and tedious tale of capital sins. (Film rights to Castle Rock; Book-of-the-Month selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-51996-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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