A confounding appetizer for the Uroboros, but perseverance may reveal important truths—that is, if there are actual truths...
Fantasy, sci-fi and the avant-garde combine to form this ambitious Pandora’s box of a novel that leaves its readers guessing, though they might not be sure which questions to ask.
What happens in these pages is not easily described, but it’s even less easily explained. Divided into 10 wildly different sections, the book first begins in a Spartan room inhabited by a boy and an artifact as mysterious as the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The object resurfaces throughout the book. When the boy looks at the “medium size cubical silver box”—a precise description that’s still vague—his eyesight goes blurry, but turning away leads to abstract visions. Do the subsequent sections capture these visions or are we all trapped inside the box? What is certain is that this challenging, experimental novel has tremendous reach, moving from a city bus and spreading outward to the very hem of the universe, where even the laws of physics begin to fray. Among the mysterious objects, metaphysics and politics, genres and space-time bend; one scene is actually set within a Möbius strip. At times, the story feels intricately woven; at others, simply convoluted. Author Exarchos operates in the traditions of James Joyce and Julio Cortazar, daring readers to deduce meaning from what might be madness but what is often a maddening text. Though the story is as engaging and perplexing as an optical illusion, the language is alternately grand and pedestrian. In a section set inside a computer universe made from binary code, “Continuity is sacrificed on the altar of total flexibility. Abolishment of mediation makes chaos less sexy.” But in another a section about old-world seafarers that echoes back to Ulysses (Homer’s version this time), the language slips a bit as a character reflects about his “childhood friend, his best buddy.” This looseness with language—sometimes academic, other times irreverent—might leave readers wondering what Exarchos’ intention truly was. As with the puzzling work of, say, David Lynch or Mark Rothko, the audience may wonder if they “get it” and whether there was ever anything to “get” at all.
A confounding appetizer for the Uroboros, but perseverance may reveal important truths—that is, if there are actual truths be revealed.Pub Date: May 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490457536
Page Count: 98
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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
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