A gentle tale centering on how people come to grip with their pasts.
Hyde (Love In The Present Tense, 2006, etc.) chronicles two New Yorkers’ efforts to escape their different but equally constricting lives in a sweet tale openly modeled on West Side Story.
Alternating chapters between the two main characters, the author begins with Sebastian, a naïve 17-year-old who chafes under the domination of his strange, obsessive father. Home schooling prevents him from making friends his own age, and he’s almost completely isolated until a doctor’s orders give him a chance to escape his stifling apartment for a few hours each day to get fresh air and exercise. Sebastian spends most of his free time with his only friend, Delilah, an older black woman who has rented an apartment to be near her new grandchild. Delilah doesn’t just provide companionship, she also gives him permission to start living for himself. Aimlessly riding the subway late at night just to get out of the house, Sebastian sees a young woman who, like him, goes to the end of the line and back. The two feel an instantaneous spark and, despite several miscues, finally manage to connect. Her name is Maria, and she’s riding the Lexington Avenue line during the hours she’d normally be working to keep her abusive boyfriend Carl, father of her two children, from discovering that she’s lost her job. When she and Sebastian find themselves falling in love, they see a chance to escape from their individual traps. She nicknames him “Tony,” so they’ll be Tony and Maria, just like in West Side Story. While the two plan, motherless Sebastian makes a devastating discovery that sends him to California to see his grandmother. That journey takes both him and Maria to the edge of a life-changing decision.
A gentle tale centering on how people come to grip with their pasts.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-52127-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
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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