How does a do-it-all party girl become a woman of virtue, the next best thing to the Virgin Mary? The answer, savage yet serene, is this seductive debut from Warner, one of a just-arriving group of new Scottish writers. The shock of waking one morning before Christmas to find her man dead on the floor proves less stressful for Morvern Callar, a produce-stacker who lives only for music and the next rave, than the inconvenience of having to deal with his body. She goes to work in her seaside Scottish town, then goes to a club, then an all- night party. But when she finally comes home a few days later, he's still there. So she hauls him into the attic and opens the windows for the winter, availing herself of his CDs and bank account and sending his unpublished novel around as he requested, but passing it off as her own. When warm weather arrives, Morvern has to deal with him again; this time she chops him up and goes on a camping trip to dispose of the pieces. Then, craving a change, she abandons work for a Mediterranean resort, where she spends everything, even a publisher's advance for ``her'' novel. Broke and jobless, she comes home to find her foster dad making out with her best friend- -who has already confessed to having gone wild with Morvern's boyfriend the night before he cut his throat. But Morvern also finds a letter informing her that the boyfriend's ample inheritance has been left to her, so she immediately heads back to the blue skies, warm beaches, and the resort rave scene—where in her splendid isolation she has an epiphany. On her next return home a few years later, much is changed, but then so is she. Morvern is the raw, resilient voice of a generation, and if this not-quite-ironic tale of redemption and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting are any indication, the Scottish Beats are already strong contenders for world-class literary status. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 11, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48741-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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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