A quiet story well told.
A haunting, exquisite novel about the nature of loss, grief and the illusion of intimacy.
The unnamed protagonist, having taken care of his failing mother for some 12 years, is devastated by her death. When a friend offers a one-semester teaching gig in Washington, D.C., and a lead on a room rental, the professor jumps at the deal. So begins Holleran’s spare story: “The house that I lived in that winter in Washington had been a rooming house with fourteen rooms, rented out mostly to addicts, when my landlord bought it in 1974.” On the nightstand is a collection of Mary Todd Lincoln’s letters; the widow’s words become a reference for everything the professor notices as he wanders the nation’s capital. Here is her dress in the Smithsonian Institution; here is where her husband was assassinated; here the atmosphere is similar to one of the First Lady’s soirees. The author slowly discloses his characters’ makeup: The professor holds on to his anguish as a form of tribute (“Grief is what you have after someone you love dies. It’s the only thing left of that person”). His landlord—reserved, formal and middle-aged—has seen hundreds of his friends die in the AIDS epidemic; in the face of such sorrow the landlord simply retreats. (“My landlord was, so far as I could tell, like many gay men of a certain age, celibate—because of AIDS, or an inability to attract the partners they wanted, or simply diminishing interest.”) Even Biscuit, the landlord’s dog, plays a subtle role in Holleran’s narrative: The professor is relieved to be able to feel sorry for something worse off than himself. Holleran’s slender novel is a work of art defying easy synopsis; the author’s skill resides—as does much of the plot—in the small details.
A quiet story well told.Pub Date: June 6, 2006
ISBN: 1-4013-0250-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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