In another quietly brilliant gem, the incomparably subtle Brookner (Altered States, 1997, etc.) puts soft, revealing touches on the face of loneliness as only the elderly know it. As in her recent A Private View (1995), the predicament of the aging is highlighted through generational contrast and conflict, although here the protagonist is female, while the youth who rocks her boat is all but sexless. Thea May is a woman of propriety, from her neat hair down to her sensible shoes. Widowed for 15 years after having married late, she's lived much of her life alone in London, and contacts with her late husband's well-to-do family, to whom she was never close for a variety of reasons, have become so ritualized by her aloofness as to barely ruffle the surface of her existence. When sister-in-law Kitty calls to ask for help in an unusual way, though, by putting up—for a week at least—the best man before her granddaughter's unexpected wedding, still waters begin to churn. And when Steve, a polite drifter with no plans for the future, moves in, Thea feels a shift in the wind even as she struggles against it. Steve and his friends might as well be visitors from another planet, so entirely do their views differ from those of Thea and Kitty's generation. But the preparations go on apace, as Thea, in spite of herself, comes to see refracted in Steve's rootlessness something strangely familiar. By the day of the wedding he's out of her life, at her insistence, but the inner turmoil he's created remains. Impulsively, Thea plans to travel herself—only to change her mind as good sense and habit regain control. Signaling profound upheaval with the slightest turn of phrase and imparting wisdom through the most trivial detail, Brookner continues her long, nuanced look at human isolation.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-45785-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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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