Castillo (Loverboys, 1996, etc.) covers familiar territory here—the trials and tribulations of passion, displacement, and cultural identity—but offers a pleasing combination of the light and cheeky with the lyrically romantic. Forty-year-old Carmen “La Coja” (the cripple) finds herself at the crossroads of life, though both paths seem to lead into the abyss. Once locally renowned as a flamenco dancer (despite her one polio-afflicted leg), Carmen now finds herself doing piece work in a Chicago sweatshop and trying to cope with both the devastating reemergence of her polio and the abandonment of her two lovers. Splicing the dismal present with her glorious past, Carmen tells of her 17-year relationship with Agust°n, her dance troupe’s dictatorial leader and her passionate one-year affair with his godson Manolo. The complicated triangle is alternately concerned with the heartstrings of love and the rigid customs of culture; both Agust°n and Manolo are Romany and follow a strict code of conventions, including a ban on marriage outside of the tribe. Though Latina, Carmen is accepted as a fellow gypsy, which serves to further splinter her identity-doting daughter to a mother whose disappointment is all too palatable, disabled dancer, muse to one man and siren to another. When Carmen issues an ultimatum to Manolo—he—ll be loyal to Agust°n or to her?—the two men disappear, leaving Carmen for five long years yearning for the erotic memory of Manolo and the comfort of Agust°n. Then both suddenly reappear in her life, with the same old demands and dilemmas. How she resolves her not-so-unpleasant quandary is a testament to her newly discovered sense of self as a singer and the old resilience that brought dance to an immovable leg. Observant and witty, if not altogether exceptional: Castillo creates a poignant portrait of passion lost and regained.
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-49676-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
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