A fine tale about the highlights and pitfalls of first love.
Young love takes a beating, or at least a spirited whisking.
Aspiring chef Eric and Anna, a Welsh management intern, both 20, cross paths when she walks into the restaurant where he works. Soon after, they begin an affair beautifully and sensuously described by debut author Christopher. All is passion, playfulness and innocence, and the romance is fully developed with all the accompanying intimacies, joys and missteps. But all is not well. Eric’s confession that he fathered a child and gave it up for adoption disturbs Anna, whose childhood was hardly idyllic either. Abruptly, she announces, the first of many times, that she doesn’t want to see him anymore. Despite her misgivings, the two reconcile, marry and move to Eric’s home state of Oregon and later travel to Wales. But the relationship experiences serious bumps, and Eric returns alone to the States. Over six years, the two part and reunite, only to split again, throughout such diverse settings as the Pacific Northwest, Miami and New York. Whenever Anna calls or appears, Eric quickly caves, abandons his plans and puts his career at risk in the hope of recapturing the magic of their early days together. Their on-again, off-again relationship is so realistically portrayed that, after a few breakups, it becomes agonizingly predictable. Although Anna and Eric pursue their respective careers, they are never fully defined in their relationship to the world; at times both come off as painfully self-absorbed. But perhaps it’s relationship absorption, as if their true intercourse is a journey in and out of the youthful fantasy of love. The novel ends on an upbeat note, delivering a sense of relief that the ball lobbed back and forth between the two is at rest. Eric is left with a deep appreciation of his first great passion and recognition of the one with whom he will share a table for two.
A fine tale about the highlights and pitfalls of first love.Pub Date: March 12, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-1972-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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