A raw, gritty, shiver-inducing—but very readable—account of a young man in a spiral of grief and self-destruction.
The debut from Canadian writer Khan offers a sharp, often disturbing primer on toxic masculinity.
Omar Ali is a 27-year-old line cook in Toronto. He gets a call from the father of his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Anna, from whom he's been estranged. Anna has killed herself...and has, her father insists, left no note for Omar. The rest of the book depicts in often agonizing, sometimes darkly humorous detail the emotional disfigurements Omar suffers—or inflicts on himself—in the aftermath of her death. Omar's grief gets sublimated into violence (he's fired for brutally slapping a co-worker), sex (we get a blow-by-blow of his affair with Kali, a young woman who comes from a Hare Krishna family); crime (mainly petty theft); and rage-posting on the internet (he blows off steam by threatening terrorist violence on Reddit). Omar also reconnects with Hussain, an old neighborhood pal who's farther along the path to self-immolation—a little crueler, more unhinged, more alienated, and more reckless. After they break into a house, two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police call on Omar. He's been under surveillance, so they have him over a barrel, but if he'll go visit local mosques and provide information, or if he'll help entrap his friend Hussain, they can keep him out of jail and provide cash. The portrait of Omar that emerges is hard to look at, and that's to Khan's credit; the inner lives of snarling, stunted, solipsistic man-boys aren't pleasant to see. Most fascinating are the ways Omar's status as a Canadian Muslim figure in. As he's well aware, for him there can be no such thing as a personal crisis, because the personal is always also political; there can be no alienation that doesn't also exacerbate his status as an alien in his own country and city, even his own skin.
A raw, gritty, shiver-inducing—but very readable—account of a young man in a spiral of grief and self-destruction.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-55152-785-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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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