Well-crafted, warmly treated—and unforgivably meek.
A widow repairs an old car in order to mend her broken life.
Alison, the heart of Barkley’s second novel (after Money, Love, 2000), has been without her husband for some two years now. Since he died, she’s been living with her quick-to-criticize sister Sarah and studiously avoiding anything like a life in her small West Virginia town. Once a teacher at the local college, she hasn’t wanted anything to do with that part of her past for quite some time. At the outset, she’s decided to take on a project: restoring the rust-eaten 1976 Corvette that’s wearing grooves in the floor of her husband’s garage. A child of the suburbs (her husband took care of all things mechanical), Alison has no skills or training for the job—just time and determination. So she gets a repair manual, starts maxing out her credit cards at the auto-parts store (run by a friendly preacher who likes to include hellfire-and-brimstone pamphlets with all purchases), and getting to work. The subplot involves Alison’s friendship with Gordon Kesler, an old man who plays records for the dance lessons that Sarah runs out of her house. Gordon, a trivia buff and great teller of lies, introduces Alison to his son, Max, who works in demolitions, blowing up old silos and the like. Alison starts up a fitful romance with Max, a surprisingly sensitive and articulate guy for someone who spends his time playing around with dynamite. An unfortunate branch of the subplot follows the draining of the lake near the town, which everyone thinks will uncover the car that, legend has it, Gordon drove across the ice years ago and that fell through, almost taking him with it. The water is drained, truth uncovered, etc. Because it’s just that kind of book, Alison’s car repair takes on über-symbolic significance as, through it, she learns how to live again.
Well-crafted, warmly treated—and unforgivably meek.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-29138-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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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