Worth a sequel when this deeply introspective author is further down the road.
In this discerning memoir of self-discovery, a veterinarian and farmer from Zambia unveils her inner workings and concludes that faith, hope, love, God and family are what matter most.
Debut author Kingdom hints early on that sex, violence and bad language may crop up as, at age 37, she looks back at her life thus far. This opening caution seems unnecessary. Sexual escapades are few and rendered in circumspect fashion. Violence is mostly confined to certain harsh veterinarian procedures, including the intrauterine dissection and piece-by-piece removal of a dead or undeliverable livestock fetus to save the mother’s life and spare the farmer the cost of a cesarean. Otherwise, violence lurks as a threat, as when the author, who is white, is warned to stay out of the black part of Pretoria while a student there. And rather than bad language, there are high-minded and even quirky chapter-ending philosophical discussions Kingdom imagines having with a younger sister (“Each religion needs to be seen as an internal organ on the body of earth”). The memoir is unconventionally organized by themes (births, deaths, growth, lessons, disease, fears, fires, rhyme, love, death and beliefs) rather than by chronology. Fears range from deeply etched memories of venomous snakes and giant spiders to musings about whether God is really good. A chapter on disease lists the author’s physical and mental ailments. But Kingdom, without saying so herself, emerges not as a sufferer but as a sturdy type perfectly attuned to the rigors of life in the Zambian bush, ensconced in family and essentially happy to be alive beneath the deep blue African sky. Readers should not expect much about contemporary Zambia or her veterinarian practice; these are hardly her main topics. Nor are the lessons she learns always profound. In one typical example, her chapter on disease builds to the realization that “we get sick.” Though raised in a secular family, she more recently conceived a deep faith in God and felt his presence. But she makes clear that she is still a work in progress with far to go on her journey of self-understanding.
Worth a sequel when this deeply introspective author is further down the road.Pub Date: July 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492797647
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
