Beautiful, rare, and touching: Kennedy handles extremely volatile material with the greatest care, never once sinking into...
American debut by Scottish prizewinning novelist Kennedy: a strange, evocative tale of the unlikely romance between two troubled and lonely people.
Helen Brindle suffers from the sort of emotional destitution that seems to exist only in the British Isles. A middle-aged housewife in Glasgow, married to a perfect brute, she endures her lot meekly but not hopelessly, waiting rather than looking for the means of escape: "She had never sought the temporary comfort of childhood hymns, of absolution, or even of very lovely Mysteries. Mrs. Brindle had only wanted someone who understood, a person who would tell her what was wrong and how to right it." When she hears a German psychiatrist, Edward E. Gluck, on the BBC discussing the "cybernetics" of sexual and mental health, Helen feels she may have found her guide. She reads some of the Professor's books and goes so far as to write him. Incredibly, he replies, and soon Helen is on her way to Stuttgart for a consultation. Helpful and attentive in his formal German manner, the Professor becomes more of a friend for Helen than therapist, and he even comes to visit her in Glasgow - where he reveals to her that he suffers from a compulsive obsession with pornography and masturbation, and that this has gutted his career and destroyed his capacity for normal human relations. Helen, suffering as much from her loss of religious faith as from her miserable marriage, finds herself more sympathetic than shocked, and she encourages the Professor to rebuild his life. Her husband's brutality, however, increases to the point of madness, and Helen has to find a way of saving herself and the Professor both. Or can they manage to save each other?
Beautiful, rare, and touching: Kennedy handles extremely volatile material with the greatest care, never once sinking into bathos or perversity. A small gem.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40272-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1998
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.
Walker (In Love and Trouble, Meridian) has set herself the task of an epistolary novel—and she scores strongly with it.
The time is in the Thirties; a young, black, Southern woman named Celie is the primary correspondent (God being her usual addressee); and the life described in her letters is one of almost impossible grimness. While young, Celie is raped by a stepfather. (Even worse, she believes him to be her real father.) She's made to bear two children that are then taken away from her. She's married off without her consent to an older man, Albert, who'd rather have Celie's sister Nettie—and, by sacrificing her body to Albert without love or feeling, Celie saves her sister, making it possible for her to escape: soon Nettle goes to Africa to work as a Christian missionary. Eventually, then, halfway through the book, as Celie's sub-literate dialect letters to God continue to mount (eventually achieving the naturalness and intensity of music, equal in beauty to Eudora Welty's early dialect stories), letters from Nettie in Africa begin to arrive. But Celie doesn't see them—because Albert holds them back from her. And it's only when Celie finds an unlikely redeemer—Albert's blues-singer lover Shug Avery—that her isolation ends: Shug takes Celie under her wing, becomes Celie's lover as well as Albert's; Shug's strength and expansiveness and wisdom finally free up Nettie's letters—thus granting poor Celie a tangible life in the now (Shug's love, encouragement) as well as a family life, a past (Nettie's letters). Walker fashions this book beautifully—with each of Celie's letters slowly adding to her independence (the implicit feminism won't surprise Walker's readers), with each letter deepening the rich, almost folk-tale-ish sense of story here. And, like an inverted pyramid, the novel thus builds itself up broadeningly while balanced on the frailest imaginable single point: the indestructibility—and battered-ness—of love.
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.Pub Date: June 28, 1982
ISBN: 0151191549
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1982
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A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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