A darkly humorous novel with sharp observations about the machinations of a monstrous mother.
The fictional memoirs of Rosalinda Achmetowna, a Tartar Tiger Mother who ruins the lives of her family across several generations, and up to the end fails to realize her toxic influence.
The narrative begins with the pregnancy of Rosa’s daughter Sulfia, whom her mother (albeit with good reason) considers egregiously stupid. Rosa tries to abort the pregnancy with a knitting needle, but it turns out Sulfia was supposed to have had twins, and one, Aminat, survives. This granddaughter becomes the proverbial apple of Rosa’s eye, and Rosa tries to groom her for success. The grandmother takes over supervision of her education, hitting Aminat and withholding affection when she’s less than perfect—which it so happens is much of the time. (Typical of their interaction is Rosa’s promise to Aminat that if she agrees to certain behaviors for three months, Rosa will get her a cat. Aminat is compliant, and they go to a city market to get the cat, but when a vendor wants to charge a high price, the grandmother refuses to pay.) Rosa is saddled with an atrociously useless husband, Kalganow, and Sulfia goes from one foundering marriage to another, picking up another pregnancy along the way (though this granddaughter, Lena, Rosa finds unacceptably ugly because she’s not a Tartar). Rosa finally finds a way out of Russia by latching onto Dieter, a disreputable German who is supposedly writing a book on Tartar cuisine. Eventually, Aminat escapes the clutches of her grandmother and achieves a limited flicker of success on a German version of American Idol.
A darkly humorous novel with sharp observations about the machinations of a monstrous mother.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60945-006-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
IN THE NEWS
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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