Ruthless editing might have liberated an intriguing thesis and sharply drawn protagonists from 100 pages of extraneous...
A double murder leads to some ugly discoveries about a small New Hampshire town and internet-fueled gossip in Baldwin’s ambitious second novel.
Unlike his witty and relaxed memoir (Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, 2012), Baldwin’s fiction strains for significance, and this one is even more overstuffed than its predecessor (You Lost Me There, 2010), with more plot and characters than the author’s technical abilities can handle. Baldwin crafts strong back stories and emotional issues for Martin Krug, a cop on the verge of retirement headed for his second divorce, and Nick Toussaint, the troubled 20-year-old he plucks from a crashed car who promptly confesses to killing the two blood-stained corpses in the back seat. And Nick’s 16-year-old truelove, Emily, subject to vicious cyberbullying and a controlling best friend, is the novel’s most full-bodied and complex character, tougher than her fragile exterior suggests. But around these three mill too many people who drop in and out of the story too often to sustain readers’ attention. Thelsa Mann, recently laid off from the Village Voice, is introduced early on and pointed in the direction of the hometown she shares with Nick and Emily, then disappears for more than 60 pages before arriving in New Hampshire to wander around obtaining a lot of thirdhand information—including a bombshell revelation about the motive behind the murders that is conveyed by a character we have just met, who heard it from someone who wasn’t there. Baldwin several times employs this technique of initially doling out plot points via a non-eyewitness, thereby muffling the impact of the eventual, fuller account by an actual participant. He seems to be making a statement about the way misinformation is spread in our hyperconnected culture, and a few clever passages of text messages reinforce it, but on the whole it simply makes for a muddy narrative.
Ruthless editing might have liberated an intriguing thesis and sharply drawn protagonists from 100 pages of extraneous material. As it stands, admirable but overreaching.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-29856-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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