A marvelous little collection about compulsion, obsession, and the extraordinary joy that a simple pleasure can bring.
A collection of stories about one writer’s obsession with, of all things, a magazine, attainable but difficult to find in a way he often finds maddening.
Argentinian writer Aira (Birthday, 2019, etc.) has produced more than 100 books, a good number of which have been translated into English. His works tend to be slim and offbeat—a zombie novel here (Dinner, 2015), a kidnapping there (Ema the Captive, 2016)—but they’re always eminently readable. Even this one, which is, yes, pretty much about hunting down a magazine and then, after having taken out a subscription, waiting for it to come in the mail. Is this fiction, as it's labeled, or nonfiction? Aira's work is so personal and frequently peculiar that it doesn't make much of a difference. He's spent a couple of decades thinking about Artforum, judging by the dates at the end of each story—not so much about the magazine’s content as his difficult quest to obtain it. Naturally, he turns each interaction into a beautifully crafted experience, even in the most banal circumstances. Take the opener, “The Sacrifice,” written in 1983, in which an issue of Artforum saves the narrator's other diligently acquired magazines from a particularly vicious rainstorm. Later there are contemplations of the magazine’s price, translated here by Silver as $10, and the personal glory of finally getting a subscription. In 2002, a short-tempered writer goes searching for a trove of Artforums spotted, by happenstance, by a friend. "Conjectures” and “Melancholy" describe the narrator’s state of mind while he waits impatiently for the next issue to arrive in the mail. The writer’s obsession with the magazine is also explained in the context of his life, in which he's always had “the problem of empty time, of ominous afternoons like the open mouth of an abyss.” This book is a slim affair, but for those who want to understand the mindset of an authentic collector, it comes straight from the heart.
A marvelous little collection about compulsion, obsession, and the extraordinary joy that a simple pleasure can bring.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2926-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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