Funny, fresh, and briskly written: a good start by a quick study.
A raucous debut by Spanish author Vallvey, with Gypsies, jewel thieves, morticians, and sibling rivalry (female variant) all mixed into one palette like so many shades of lurid crimson.
A house of nine women and no men is going to be full of stories just about anywhere—but in Spain it will be a virtual Decameron. Perhaps that is why narrator Candela works at a morgue, where she is able to talk to her clients without being interrupted. Candela’s younger sister Gador has recently moved back home after discovering a cache of videotapes on which her husband Victor filmed himself committing serial adultery with a wide assortment of near-strangers. She and Candela share a room. Just down the hall are their sisters Carmina, Paula, Bely, and Brandy, their widowed Mama, and their Grandma and Aunt Mary. Compared to such a domestic hothouse, the morgue is an oasis of calm—until the arrival of Joaquin, the Gypsy patriarch who arrives for burial in a top hat and cane. Inside the cane (which rigor mortis has permanently attached to Joaquin’s right hand) Candela discovers a pile of diamonds and deftly pockets them. Later, she falls in love with Amador, Joaquin’s son, who apparently knew nothing of the cane’s contents. Did anyone, other than Joaquin himself? Imagine living in a madhouse where you have a fortune tucked away in some dresser drawer. Then ask yourself which is the better risk: sell the stolen goods that will purchase your freedom but might bring a long stint in jail; or stay cooped up with eight other neurotics like yourself. Don’t take too long answering that one.
Funny, fresh, and briskly written: a good start by a quick study.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58322-488-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
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
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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