A witty transatlantic debut about the perils of a bright young woman trapped behind a switchboard at one of London’s more demented City offices. The take-this-job-and-shove-it genre is a favorite among young writers for a simple reason: Most have to pay the bills in some dreadful fashion during the long gray dawn before they are ever published. Forrester’s heroine, however, finishes her novel while she works a dreadful day job. Her novel is a journal really, though she can—t quite put everything into it. Especially names. Like her own, for starters, and that of her boyfriend (who forbids her to mention him and is only referred to as the Man Who Mustn—t be Mentioned, or MWMM). And she must mind what she says about the office itself; her father assures her that libel laws are quite strict in Britain. Although her real interest is literature, The Academy of Material Science in London hired her as a receptionist fresh out of university, and she does manage to get quite a bit of writing done at her desk despite the constant ringing of the phone and the endless parade of messengers dropping off packages. But she has little faith in herself, either as a writer or a person——I ought to be able to transform my misery into something else through writing, but instead I just write about it and it stays the same——and most of the time her affair with the MWMM seems as pointless to her as her manuscript does. Is she deluded? Or just inexperienced? Eventually, she concludes that “the beginning of love is a story, the end of love is a story, but before the end the middle might mean anything.” Something plenty of married couples and successful authors take a lifetime to discover. Candid, fresh, and likable: Forrester’s naturalistic tone and elegant voice more than compensate for her slightly—and endearingly—aimless narrative.
Pub Date: Aug. 3, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-86292-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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
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
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