Delightfully original, Solana’s fresh voice deserves attention.
A unique first novel about a young woman living in Madrid who approaches bureaucracy with an infectious, innocent charm.
Aurora Ortiz needs a job. Her intelligence is evident (she studied Latin and Greek and still reads classics) and her ambition is simple: She wants to be a building caretaker. But in order to apply for any kind of work, the 30-year-old widow has to register with an employment agency, draft a résumé and cover letter and set up lengthy in-person interviews, even though there might not be available openings. Aurora, who was raised in a tiny Galician village, has brought to Madrid an unconventional approach to everything, including job hunting. Rather than taking the traditional route, Aurora writes long, honest letters to the agency, and through them her life story emerges. She pontificates on her neighbor Fany, a trained beautician and award-winning writer who is excited about her new job as a supermarket cashier; she praises her Aunt Domi back in the village of San Clemente de Quintás; and she poignantly reminisces about her adoring late husband Roberto. Though Fany and her Madrid friends question Aurora’s technique, she thrives on the support of those back home (including new friend Clemente, who has taken a teaching post in the village). Eventually, her wacky persistence pays off when Guillermo, an officer in the employment agency, falls under the spell of her letters. Aurora is immensely likable, as quirky and enchanting as the title character of Amelie, and Solana’s satire of the ridiculous complexity of so much red tape will resonate with anyone who has had to look for work.
Delightfully original, Solana’s fresh voice deserves attention.Pub Date: April 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-84343-096-7
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Harvill UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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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