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
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
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her...
Avery Stafford, a lawyer, descendant of two prominent Southern families and daughter of a distinguished senator, discovers a family secret that alters her perspective on heritage.
Wingate (Sisters, 2016, etc.) shifts the story in her latest novel between present and past as Avery uncovers evidence that her Grandma Judy was a victim of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and is related to a woman Avery and her father meet when he visits a nursing home. Although Avery is living at home to help her parents through her father’s cancer treatment, she is also being groomed for her own political career. Readers learn that investigating her family’s past is not part of Avery's scripted existence, but Wingate's attempts to make her seem torn about this are never fully developed, and descriptions of her chemistry with a man she meets as she's searching are also unconvincing. Sections describing the real-life orphanage director Georgia Tann, who stole poor children, mistreated them, and placed them for adoption with wealthy clients—including Joan Crawford and June Allyson—are more vivid, as are passages about Grandma Judy and her siblings. Wingate’s fans and readers who enjoy family dramas will find enough to entertain them, and book clubs may enjoy dissecting the relationship and historical issues in the book.
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her fictional characters' lives.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28468-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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