A rich, fictionalized account of a little-known region’s past and present.
Stores (Christian Science, 2004) explores the history of Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec in this short story collection.
The author presents fictionalized accounts of five centuries worth of invasions, rebellions, and elections in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec—a region of Mexico long renowned for its unique culture and fiercely independent spirit. The stories range from Zapotec peasants receiving Aztec merchants in Tehuantepec in 1495, to the city of Juchitán establishing local, leftist autonomy in the 1980s. In these tales, the isthmus is a place of passions and legends, with a long history of exploitation by outsiders; as Mexico-based author Nancy Davies writes in her foreword, it “historically has been an area of conflict, like all geographic areas that serve as crossroads, trade routes, and strategic guardians for empires made or in the making.” Stores’ tales take readers through these many conflicts, from the final free days of the Zapotec Binni gula’sa’ people to the Spanish conquest, through the Rebellion of 1660 and the French intervention two centuries later, up to the Mexican Revolution and the clashes between national and local parties in the second half of the 20th century. The 11 stories, along with supplementary materials, offer a glimpse at this little-visited area of Mexico, where the gulf is closest to the Pacific Ocean. Stores is a capable writer, adeptly handling the shifting languages and cultures that enter and exit the narratives. His characters sometimes feel a bit flat, as their emotional complexity is generally secondary to their participation in significant events; the didactic aim of the book reveals itself in long passages of historical exposition. This is less a book of historical fiction than one that uses fiction as a tool to teach history. Once readers realize this, however, the collection becomes quite enjoyable, as the landscapes, cultures, and clashes are engaging and likely unknown to most English-language readers. The comprehensive historical coverage persuasively contextualizes the troubles and political desires of the region’s modern population. Like every contemporary place, it continues to experience a long, difficult birth.
A rich, fictionalized account of a little-known region’s past and present.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-1440174889
Page Count: 392
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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