A technocratic Kafka nightmare—heavy on surreal diagnosis of the world’s ills, light on the traditional rewards of...
A spare, dystopian fable that examines how closely contemporary life has caught up to Kafka since the publication of The Castle.
No one comes to meet the nameless Investigator when a train lets him off at a nameless city. So it’s long after dark by the time he arrives at the Enterprise, where he’s been sent to look into a series of 20 suicides over the past year. A disembodied voice refuses to admit him so late and declines to give him any information about where he might pass the night. Left to his own devices, the Investigator finds the mordantly misnamed Hope Hotel, where a Giantess forces him to review an exhaustive list of hotel policies before she gives him the key to a room where he collapses for the night. In the morning, the Server at the hotel restaurant won’t give him tea, toast or orange juice, and the Policeman he meets over his nonbreakfast ends up questioning him. When he arrives at the Enterprise, predictably without the identification he left at the Hope, he gets little cooperation from the Guard, the Guide and especially the Manager, who’s cordial enough but also insecure, delusional and prone to hysterical fits. After spending a second night passed out in the Enterprise, the Investigator finds all the functionaries who posed such obstacles yesterday so solicitous that the effect is even more disturbing. By this time Claudel (Brodeck, 2009, etc.) has long since made it clear that in this investigation, it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
A technocratic Kafka nightmare—heavy on surreal diagnosis of the world’s ills, light on the traditional rewards of storytelling—crossed with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and a hint of Buster Keaton.Pub Date: July 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-53534-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read...
Marrs’ debut novel traces the stories of five people who find their soul mates—or do they?
Imagine if you could submit to a simple DNA test and then receive your Match in your email. Not just an online date who might be geographically compatible, but a true and unique genetically destined partner. While the potential long-term benefits may seem to outweigh the negative consequences, the system is far from infallible; as any science-fiction fan could tell you, if it sounds too good to be true, there’s usually a catastrophe lurking at the other end. Marrs’ novel traces five individuals who meet their Matches under varying circumstances and with widely conflicting outcomes. During the course of their romantic adventures (and misadventures), the entire DNA matching algorithm will prove to be susceptible to hacking, also proving that (gasp!) just because something may be driven by science doesn’t mean that it’s free from the world of human error. The philosophy posed by the novel speaks not just to the power of love and the laws of attraction, but also serves as a commentary on today’s world of genetic exploration. Do these breakthroughs simplify our lives, or do they make us lazy, replacing the idea of “destiny” or “fate” with “science” as a larger power that we don’t need to question? These ideas keep the novel moving along and create a deeper level of interest, since most of the narrative threads are fairly predictable. The two exceptions are the psychopathic serial killer who meets his Match and begins to lose interest in killing and the heterosexual man matched with another man, both of whom must then redefine sexuality and love, commitment and family.
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read all in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-00510-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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