Even more problematic than the melodrama is the sheer dullness of Silas and Lydia, a flaw that sinks what might have been a...
In post-apartheid South Africa, a family is bedeviled by an apartheid-era rape. Dangor’s latest (after Kafka’s Curse, 1999) was a finalist for this year’s Man Booker.
President Mandela is stepping down, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is issuing its report. This is a big deal, especially for Silas Ali, a lawyer and civil servant charged with fixing last-minute problems. Silas is a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and is also Colored (i.e., “of mixed-race”). Nineteen years earlier, his wife, Lydia, had been raped by a white cop, Du Boise, as Silas, chained, had been powerless to intervene. Lydia bore a son, Mikey, with Du Boise the father. Her marriage to Silas has endured, but the love has gone, and she cannot speak about her ordeal. As the story opens in suburban Johannesburg, Silas tells Lydia of his recent chance meeting with the rapist, and the old wound is made even more painful when she learns that Du Boise is seeking amnesty. Silas tries to comfort her, but she rejects him, turning instead to her beautiful, sensual son, and a wet kiss almost becomes something more. Mikey, who has started bedding older women, is in turmoil too. He has read his mother’s old diary and knows about the rape and his paternity, and he is about to discover further that his grandfather, a Muslim in India, executed the British officer who had raped the old man’s sister. What more motivation does a hot-blooded teenager need? Mikey steals a gun, offs the father of a girlfriend for sexually abusing her, then mows down Du Boise. His Muslim uncle will spirit him off to India. Dangor’s ragged storyline embodies also a sober, measured account of former revolutionaries adjusting to their new roles as pragmatic administrators, but it’s no match for the churning melodrama.
Even more problematic than the melodrama is the sheer dullness of Silas and Lydia, a flaw that sinks what might have been a savvy insider’s view of the new South Africa.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-7006-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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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