A graceful exploration of loneliness, “their true covenant,” and the worm that gnaws at the heart of all things.
Call it Peyton Place with Uzis: Israeli novelist Hedaya finds the worm in an exceedingly shiny apple.
Best known for writing the Israeli TV series and HBO import In Treatment, Hedaya shows a marked fascination in the way people think—or, often, fail to think. Of one character, Alona, he writes, by way of example, “Her mind had wandered to two different places, as if she were walking two dogs, each pulling in the opposite direction.” Alona has reason to be confused. Like the other residents of the gated community of Eden, a place set off from the lesser denizens of Israeli society but not entirely free of them, she’s a mess: her soon-to-be-ex-husband is always around; one of her teenage kids is a budding sexpot and boozer in training; and her other kid wallows in depression. Or maybe not. “He’s not depressed, says Mark, her estranged spouse. "On the contrary, Alona, he’s flourishing. You just can’t see it.” Mark’s got troubles of his own, but at least the Italian restaurant he recently opened “at the edge of the moshav, right in the woods, on land the council had agreed to lease to him practically for free” has a chance of surviving. Daughter Roni, on the other hand, seems bent on self-destruction, though she harbors a not-so-secret desire to get pregnant. So does Dafna, their neighbor, who has tried every method of fertilization that science has to offer. And so it is in Eden, a place of intertwining lives founded by Holocaust survivors as a socialist farming collective, now devolved into a California-style sea of one- and two-story pastel bungalows and mini-mansions, where nothing much happens—but when it does, it speaks to the baser instincts of humans. Just so, Hedaya’s novel moves from page to page without much action but with plenty of mutual misunderstanding and miscommunication—
the very stuff, in other words, of life.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9265-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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