Not enjoyable, even a little distasteful.
A descendent of John D. Rockefeller, Norton debuts with a coming-of-age novel about another poor little rich girl who suffers neglect and abuse at the hands of her villainous mother.
In 1978 Chicago, 10-year-old Bettina lives in fear and fascination of her mother: Babs Ballentyne, heiress to the Ballentyne chocolate fortune, is an unfortunate cross between Auntie Mame and Mommy Dearest, spoiled, egotistical and despotic. Although Bettina describes her as a blond beauty in the Grace Kelly mold, Babs is unrelentingly crass and hates anything that smacks of intellect or emotion. Whether she loves her daughter is unclear, but bookish, sensitive Bettina irritates the controlling Babs to no end. When Babs discovers a forbidden can of ginger ale in Bettina’s room, she goes berserk and destroys Bettina’s most prized possession. What Babs loves, besides profanity and cigarettes, is sex; and she describes to Bettina in prurient detail the sex she’s enjoying with her married boyfriend, Mack. Over the next couple of years as the relationship waxes and wanes, Mack becomes the one semidependable adult in Bettina’s life, not counting a stereotypical black cook. But shortly after returning to his wife, Mack dies in a drunken car accident. Cut to 1983. Bettina arrives at prep school in New Hampshire alone with one suitcase and a lot of travelers’ checks. She’s not very interested in her genuinely nice roommate (Bettina’s condescending attitudes toward anyone middle class, not to mention her tone of low-key anti-Semitism, may be inherited but limit a reader’s sympathy). Meredith, the preppy mean girl down the hall, becomes Bettina’s obsession, whom she wants to impress and defeat, especially when she realizes Meredith’s on-again-off-again boyfriend is Mack’s son. Soon Bettina is navigating her sexual awakening with side roads into sadomasochism. Babs disappears from the story for a while but shows up in time to ruin a little more of Bettina’s life before her final exit. Bettina ends her flat-footed narration not on a note of growth or self-awareness, but one of enduring blame.
Not enjoyable, even a little distasteful.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-84004-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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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