An impressively savvy political novel that compares interestingly with Robert Stone's Damascus Gate (1998).
An increasingly suspenseful debut novel from the award-winning New Yorker writer (The Rainy Season, 1989) that spins a persuasively elaborate plot from a tragic "incident" at a Jerusalem checkpoint.
During a time of continuing terrorist attacks, Palestinian visitors to the new City are detained by Israeli officer-in-charge Lieutenant Ari Doron: among them are American-born Marina Hajimi, en route with her two-year-old son to visit her husband Hassan, a political prisoner. The asthmatic child, thus denied immediate medical treatment, dies in his mother's arms. The ensuing public outcry is exploited by Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen alike, and several other major characters soon enter the action. Marina's father George Raad, a Boston cardiologist and an Edward Said–like émigré intellectual, flies to his daughter's side in the country he had "abandoned"—and endures a disturbing reunion with his former boyhood friend, radical activist Ahmed Amr ("a wrong-headed Bedouin astride a fiery stallion, recklessly leading boys to their deaths"). The task of protecting the despised Doron (and of orchestrating much-needed damage control) brings in Israeli army veteran Colonel Daniel Yizhar, a wily political realist perfectly willing to use lies in service of "the truth." And the hunt for Doron, who in fact never attempts to hide, or claim he was "only following orders," engages Palestinian brothers Adnan and Mahmoud Sheukhi, the latter of whom burns to prove himself a devout nationalist. The story builds terrific tension as Wilentz draws her several subplots gradually together, and a series of staggered climaxes (including the consequences of Raad's physical and psychic failings, Doron's confused gestures toward expiation, and the fate of Marina's husband Hassan—freed by the Israelis, but unfree of the commitments that engulf him) underscores its bleak, unassailable central themes: that in this helplessly fragmented corner of the world, "everyone was an extremist because everyone wanted things simple" and that "Endings did not happen here."
An impressively savvy political novel that compares interestingly with Robert Stone's Damascus Gate (1998).Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-85436-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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