Breezy and smart enough, but more like a warm-up for a real novel than the thing itself.
Or, the thorny romantic entanglements of immigration lawyers.
Considering the size of the dot-bomb implosion and its still-reverberating effects, it’s surprising that more fiction writers haven’t availed themselves of the new, downsized, Silicon Valley as a setting for comic contretemps. Todd (Exit Strategies, 2002, etc.) uses it here in an unlikely manner as she sets her remarried, fortysomething protagonist, Lynn Bartlett, to working the detritus of the dot-bomb as an immigration lawyer—all those immigrants who came to work the Internet boom have now lost their jobs, their visas are soon expiring, and they don’t want to leave America. Married to a millionaire tech businessman (whose real business is never quite explained, much like his character) with two grown children (they both seem to mistake Lynn for a wicked fairy stepmother), Lynn has her hands full keeping her small firm afloat after her partner makes some potentially catastrophic mistakes. Having saddled herself with the book-title that she did, Todd is forced to send Lynn into narrative detours where she goes through emotional hand-wringing over her status as second wife, going so far as to join an informal coffee-klatch known as the Anne Boleyn Society. This could have been the breeding ground for decent situational comedy, but Todd sabotages it by making the details of Lynn’s real life—her collapsing business and the strange attraction she starts feeling toward one of her clients, a Russian scientist from Stanford—much more interesting, to the point where the second-wife material feels clumsily grafted on. Todd can be painfully didactic at times (Lynn’s stepchildren and her husband’s first wife are mostly monstrous caricatures), and she has an obnoxious default tic of always comparing important dramatic moments to books or films, although the whole sweeps by in a competent and generally likable fashion.
Breezy and smart enough, but more like a warm-up for a real novel than the thing itself.Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-051238-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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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