Interesting history, but the writing is pedantic.
A historical novel of sorts, blending fact and fiction, set in the last days of the Third Reich.
At the heart of the story are the Loerber siblings—Manni, Franzi, Ziggy and Sebastian—who before the war have a famous cabaret act, the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers. After a prologue set in 1933, in which McNally shows us their act, the narrative skips to the spring of 1945. Hitler is living in a fantasy world in which he gives orders to divisions that no longer exist, and Albert Speer and Heinrich Himmler are jockeying for position to be the next Reichsführer and thus to try to leverage an inevitable defeat into the most favorable terms for Germany. During the war the Loerber brothers have scattered, and Sebastian has in fact disappeared for the past 11 years. Manni becomes a chauffeur for Speer as Speer surreptitiously visits the industrial areas of Germany, which Hitler has decreed should be destroyed. Speer’s task is to convince the captains of industry to preserve the factories so Germany can be guaranteed some kind of economic future. Along the way we meet Wolfgang Lüth, leader of U-boat crews (one crew member is Ziggy, who improbably becomes part of Lüth’s staff and who wins a Knight’s Cross); Admiral Karl Dönitz; and even postwar Cold warriors George Ball, Paul Nitze and John Kenneth Galbraith. Most of the Loerbers have turned to spying, and Sebastian has even aligned himself with the Blood of Israel, a secretive group that ultimately promotes postwar settlement in Palestine. We see here some Nazis in denial, especially Himmler, who, on being shown pictures from Bergen-Belsen, questions, “ ‘Am I to blame for the excesses of my subordinates?’ ” The title refers to Speer’s grandiose plans for a Germany of “vast plazas and boulevards…gigantic ministries and monuments,” a vision ironically undermined by the grim realities of the spring of 1945.
Interesting history, but the writing is pedantic.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5882-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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
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A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.
An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).
Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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