The story rambles somewhat and takes time to cohere, but then it manages to express the unutterable anguish of a child cast...
Heartbreaking if not flawless novel debut by Davis (stories: Circling The Drain, 1999) about a severely traumatized girl struggling to recover her sanity and self-esteem.
From time immemorial, little boys have dreamed of running off to join the circus—and it stands to reason that little girls must have similar fantasies. At 15, Faith Duckle may not have been a girl, and at nearly 200 pounds she certainly wasn’t little. But she certainly was innocent, and totally unable to manage the shock of being gang-raped by a group of high school hooligans under the bleachers during the annual Homecoming game. Some months after her assault, Faith took an overdose of tranquillizers and nearly killed herself. She then spent almost a year in Berrybrook, a mental institution where she slowly put her life back together—and lost 60 pounds. She then went back to school but found that the ordinary routines of teenaged life were now too juvenile for her. One of her few friends was Charlie, who was dating a member of the Fartlesworth Circus, which was just then passing through town. Charlie introduced Faith to his friends in the sideshow, who forged a kind of misfits bond with her and allowed her to join them as they toured the hinterlands of the Deep South. Accompanied everywhere by the Fat Girl (the ghost of Faith’s former self), Faith cautiously allowed herself to become a part of this initially alien but eventually quite welcoming world, and worked her way up the ranks from grounds crew to trapeze artist. And once she found herself secure in her new life and new world, she began to make plans for getting back at the people who nearly destroyed her years before.
The story rambles somewhat and takes time to cohere, but then it manages to express the unutterable anguish of a child cast into an adult world of hatreds and cruelties that ought to be fatal but walk away intact.Pub Date: March 4, 2003
ISBN: 0-688-16781-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
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
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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