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NIGHT

Name: NIGHT
Author: Bilge Karasu
ISBN: 0-8071-1849-4

by Bilge Karasu ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 1994

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Winner of the Pegasus Prize for literatures rarely translated into English, this novel introduces an experimental Turkish novelist to American readers—a rare find indeed. Karasu begins with all the standard clichÇs about night- -blackness, secrets, curfews, murders, fears at their height; he then proceeds to extend these banalities so far that the images they produce seem ingenious. The horrorscape he depicts is reminiscent of Chile or El Salvador, where people suddenly ``disappear.'' Characters are constantly under surveillance by the night's commanding forces; even chancing upon a forgotten notebook could lead to the finder's death. Writing to stave off madness, the narrator (or is it four different narrators?) says in a ``footnote'' to his writing: ``The main thing is to keep the reader from sensing that some of these paths won't take incidents or anybody anywhere....'' While on one level the whole book consists of ruminations on the act of writing, the product itself is not taken very seriously: ``[P]eople are put to sleep through the use of words.'' Letters are never sent; authors attempt to retract words spoken or written earlier. And they have no compunctions about publishing under someone else's name. If an image or a name is used more than two or three times, it's destined to become a metaphor: N. for ``night'' (or is it ``narrator''?), a deaf schoolmate for the writer ``deaf to the world.'' One unnamed narrator even comments on how many people are so self-involved that if tragedy (such as the well-plotted murders of the night) does not affect them directly, they go about their business pretending it doesn't exist. While it might seem odd to find such crafted postmodernist writing coming out of Turkey, Night reads so smoothly that we forget it's a translation.

Pub Date: April 6, 1994

ISBN: 0-8071-1849-4

Page Count: 142

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GARDEN OF THE DEPARTED CATS
by Bilge Karasu & translated by Aron R. Aji

- BOOK REVIEW
DEATH IN TROY
by Bilge Karasu & translated by Aron Aji

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.