Following his grim, medieval Morality Play (1995) with a more delicate modern work, Unsworth makes the most both of his Booker Prizewinning talents and the Italian countryside he now calls home to offer an homage to Umbria and a skewering of the motley multinational crew who've taken up residence there. The Chapmans are British; the Greens, American; Blemish, British; Ritter, German; Arturo and Fabio, from the south; Monti, from the north; while Mancini, like God, has no place of origin- -leaving the three Checchetti as the only ones with roots in the richer ocher of the Umbrian soil. But the locals are a conniving lot who approach the Chapmans to ask for reparation when the Chapmans' garden wall collapses into the road shared by all, blaming their expatriate neighbors' moving-truck traffic for the damage. As Cecilia and Harold consult their attorney, Mancini, the elderly Greens, who need to renovate their old farmhouse, are being hoodwinked by the lugubrious Blemish, who intends to fleece them for all they're worth as their ``project manager.'' Ritter, meanwhile, his interpreting career ending in a breakdown, is meticulously clearing his bramble-choked land, work that looses a flood of childhood memories of Rome, where his father was a Nazi intelligence officer in WW II. Fabio is about to be duped into turning over to Arturo the deed to the house he and Arturo have shared for 15 years, only because Arturo is now eager to be gone, while Monti, a professor of Italian history from Turin, loses himself in the regional intrigues spanning blood-soaked centuries after his wife leaves him. For one and all, moments of crisis prove cathartic, and more often than not, the ageless, serenely just Mancini has a hand in guiding the outcome. As if for just a change of pace, Unsworth offers this gentle sendup of the ongoing drive to colonize pastoral Italy. But the exquisitely evoked Umbrian landscape that serves as backdrop for these petty squabbles and personal dramas is the real draw here.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48651-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
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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