Obvious is one thing Beattie never is. Her elegantly sculpted tale is both wrenchingly sad and ultimately enigmatic: as...
A New England boarding school for “really bright kids who’ve screwed up” proves a poor preparation for adult life.
Beattie (The Accomplished Guest, 2017, etc.) expertly captures the overheated atmosphere at Bailey Academy, where charismatic teacher Pierre LaVerdere selects a small group of students he considers capable of being trained to converse on his elevated intellectual level. Although protagonist Ben is one of “LaVerdere’s Leading Lights,” we see him from the novel’s earliest pages carefully looking for clues to what appropriate/expected behavior might be. Few solid values are evident to Ben and his classmates even before 9/11 reinforces their perception that nothing can be counted on in an uncertain world. They scatter to various elite colleges, and Ben graduates from Cornell with as little idea of what his interests and goals are as he had at Bailey. Beattie sketches the next 10 years of his life in an episodic narrative of jobs taken and discarded as randomly as lovers. (The only one who sticks for a while is Arly: drug-taking, emotionally abusive, brutally promiscuous, and a prime candidate for “Worst Girlfriend Ever.”) Ben’s only real commitment seems to be to the Hudson Valley town he moves to in 2011, gradually gentrified into an affluent exurb. Friends from Bailey turn up but are either evasive (former BFF Jasper) or exploitive (too-cool-for-school LouLou). For a long time, the novel seems as aimless as Ben, but slowly, with her characteristic cool precision, Beattie reveals a man who, for an array of complex reasons linked to Bailey and his childhood, has drawn from life the conclusion that “everybody leaves everybody.” When LaVerdere reappears with unwelcome revelations about the ways he is entangled in his former student’s past and present, Ben’s rage has multiple targets. A final scene with a fellow survivor of other people’s emotional wars suggests the faintest chance for a more rewarding connection, then declares it impossible “for every obvious reason.”
Obvious is one thing Beattie never is. Her elegantly sculpted tale is both wrenchingly sad and ultimately enigmatic: as usual.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55734-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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