The sequel to Sinclair's bestselling Coffee Will Make You Black (1994) once again features sassy Stevie, now on a Candide-esque journey from working-class Chicago to college in the Illinois sticks to San Francisco at the height of gay liberation. This is no great narrative by any stretch, but more a collection of vignettes loosely arranged around the twin themes of growing up and coming out. Sinclair's strength is in her dialogue, not in her grasp of character and setting. But the dialogue is terrific—nailed perfectly to the tempestuous mid-1970s. Brothers haven't been doing it for Stevie, so during her waning college days she commences a tentative shift to the other side, first flirting with a fellow student from France, then going all the way over during a graduation trip to the Bay Area. Enthralled by the tolerant San Fran style, Stevie moves in with her new girlfriend but soon discovers that life in northern California's homosexual paradise—while filled with endless days and nights of vegetarian love-ins, discussions of positive energy, and the free consumption of drugs—isn't going to be a stroll through the Bohemian Grove. She spends the first two-thirds of the novel unemployed, then gets dumped, and encounters racism and homophobia at roughly the same pace that she greets Frisco's gaggle of shiny, happy people. Sterling, a gay man deep into his lifestyle, takes her in, and she eventually gets a job. Finally, after a brief fling with a bisexual white woman, Stevie returns to Chicago for the inevitable sexual confession to her all-important and ever-wise grandmother. By now, though, she's a California dyke, and the suggestion is that the post-disco part of her story will deal more critically with gay politics and suffering as the specter of AIDS descends. The writing is wooden, but the Afros are big, and the sex isn't laughable. Honest, simple storytelling with a gentle bite. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-7868-6069-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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