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MONNEW

Name: MONNEW
Author: Ahmadou Kourouma
ISBN: 1-56279-027-7

by Ahmadou Kourouma ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 8, 1993

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Ivory Coast-born Kourouma (The Suns of Independence, 1982) brilliantly indicts both colonial and independent Africa for their monnew—insults, outrages, humiliations. Like a griot (one of the traditional storytellers of West Africa), Kourouma tells of Djigui Keita, the ``AgeOldMan,'' in idiomatic prose that reflects the mythic nature and intent of his tale. Djigui, a great king, tries to repel the French colonialists with human sacrifices and a towering wall, but he's soon won over by the French, who promise to build him a railway line from the coast. In return, Djigui is to provide them with free labor. As he grows older, however, this devout, humanistic Moslem begins to question his bargain with the French as their demands for goods and labor grow more rapacious. Djigui's subjects are also made to fight for France in WW I, suffer under the PÇtainists, welcome de Gaulle, and then participate in French-rigged elections. The French, Djigui realizes, are all promises—the railway never materializes—and bestowers of trifles, like a visit to France for Djigui when he's invested with the Legion of Honor. But as independence nears, Djigui's own people— including son Bema—are equally treacherous and greedy. Djigui now understands that people's woes, their monnew, like his own, come from themselves—``the wound of Djigui came from a possession of Djigui, the wound that never closes is the one left by the crocodile born of your own.'' In a last-minute effort to thwart his son, the 125-year-old patriarch sets off for the ancestral stronghold to abdicate, and thereby end the dynasty, but he dies en route. The ``rough path'' is unchanged, monnew continues. An evocative lament for the passing of the old—as well as a bitter indictment of all that leaves Africans still ``voiceless in short.''

Pub Date: Feb. 8, 1993

ISBN: 1-56279-027-7

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED
by Ahmadou Kourouma & translated by Frank Wynne

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.