A brilliant, richly allusive novel from the acclaimed Russian writer (Pushkin House, 1987, etc.), chronicling a search for the soul of a man and his country. Written over the last decade and ending with the 1991 coup, the three tales that comprise this novel present three way stations on the narrator's pilgrimage and reflect the enormous political changes taking place in Russia. A series of encounters in settings lush with spiritual and historical associations enable the protagonist to explore humanity's purpose, its relationship with God and other animals, and the ethical state of Russia. The journey begins, in ``Birds or the Catechesis of Man,'' at Russia's most western point, a spit of land that juts into the Baltic Sea, with the narrator raising queries about the environment and the role of atomic power with a scientist working at a nearby research station where birds are studied. In ``Man in a Landscape,'' set somewhere outside Moscow, he debates with a painter who asserts that ``the world was completely ready when man appeared in it. Man created nothing...didn't create art, either.'' On the shores of the Black Sea, in ``Awaiting Monkeys,'' he meets up again with the scientist and the painter, works as a literary critic, acts in a movie, and then, moving back and forth between Moscow and the Black Sea shore during the Gorbachev years, on the day of the coup experiences a consoling epiphany: an army of angels in the air who ``smelled of the fire of their tireless battle'' for Russia. The title refers to an experiment in ``keeping monkeys in uncongenial climatic zones under almost congenial natural conditions. In other words, free.'' As the narrator ironically observes, ``the monkey is free in Russia, under socialism! We're not free but the monkey is.'' A quintessentially Russian pilgrim's progress, infused with fierce intellectual energy, searing irony, and an anguished love for a long-suffering country and its people.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-10578-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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