Maybe overwriting is the only way to handle the end of civilization. Seems to work here.
Anthropologists open Pandora’s box in South Dakota.
First-novelist Johnson, author of one of last year’s most impressive story collections (Emporium), has his wry way with the ecosystem, the breakdown of law, frontier universities, families, and other complexities in this very busy, highly original, largely entertaining, and occasionally maddening take on environmental disaster. Tenured but shaky one-book wonder Hank Hannah, professor of anthropology, fitfully labors in the spectacular disorder of his collected samples of ice cores, atmospheric layers, and other snips of the universe at the University of Southwestern South Dakota. Pining for his late stepmother, lazily lusting after Trudy, one of his two prize grad students, going not much of anywhere in his study of the early American Clovis people who may have wiped out most of the hemisphere’s megafauna twelve millennia ago, Hank more or less oversees the studies of Eggers, his other grad student. Eggers has wowed the anthropological community with his ambitious doctoral project, a year spent living with nothing but Clovis technology right in the middle of the otherwise featureless campus-on-the-steppe. Clad in fur clothing of his own tailoring, chowing down on the campus squirrels, scratching constantly from plagues of worms and insects, Eggers, the child of billionaires, has continued his studies alongside the conventional student body, and in so doing has unearthed the supreme rarity: a Clovis burial site on the fringe of one of those unspeakably garish Indian casinos. Interrupted by, among other things, an attack of Pomeranians, Trudy and Hank assist with the dig, eventually unearthing all of the troubles of the world. No kidding. A prize pig will be murdered, Hank will become gobsmacked by love for a Siberian plant paleontologist, Trudy will sink two automobiles, the Pomeranians will become sled dogs, and Hank will go to federal prison on the way to the Apocalypse. Johnson manages somehow to squeeze in some very tender observations about childhood and loss in the midst of this weird and ominous avalanche.
Maybe overwriting is the only way to handle the end of civilization. Seems to work here.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-670-03235-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
