Hemon's prose suffers occasionally from the overstudious diction of the non-native speaker, but he is clearly a writer of...
Uneven but not uninteresting stories from first-timer Hemon, a Conradian figure, an exile from Sarajevo who has lived in Chicago for eight years, remaking himself into an American writer.
The collection is comprised of seven stories and a novella, `Blind Joszef Pronek & Dead Souls`—and as the title of that longer work suggests—some of the author’s often cynical humor can be traced back to other East European writers like Gogol and Kafka. But there are also traces of influences as various as Borges and Calvino in the puzzle-joke story `The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders.` Hemon seems fascinated with trying to reproduce the creepy tactility of decay and, as might be expected from a refugee from the former Yugoslavia, extremes of senseless violence. At its worst, the result is a piece like `A Coin,` which recounts the suffering of the besieged civilians of Sarajevo in somewhat shopworn, overfamiliar terms unintentionally echoing the voyeurism that it accuses Western journalists of perpetrating. On the other hand, particularly in the novella, a recounting of the wanderings of a Sarajevan transplanted to Chicago at the outset of the civil war, and in `The Sorge Spy Ring,` a longish, clever mix of autobiographical reminiscence and historical fact with a totally unexpected dark ending, Hemon displays a considerable command of sudden shifts in tone, shuttling swiftly but surely between black comedy and bleak reality. The volume is shot through with a dry, deadpan humor that is clearly a defensive carapace grown in response to decades of Stalinist/Titoist falsifications and repression, as well as an understandable fascination with the grim detritus of Balkan history.
Hemon's prose suffers occasionally from the overstudious diction of the non-native speaker, but he is clearly a writer of some promise.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49923-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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