Slender, often farcical events are significantly enhanced by astute, affectionately mocking prose and a wicked but merciful...
A witty assassination of North London Jewish matriarchy by an award-winning British novelist.
Rabbi Claudia Rubin is glamorous, brilliant and successful: “Everyone wants to join New Belsize Liberal, where famous authors come to Chanukkah parties.” Her watchword is family, and her own children are “attentive, affectionate, as close as a family can be.” However, as Mendelson’s mordantly comic novel (after Daughters of Jerusalem, 2003, etc.) opens, the entire Rubin edifice, built on secrets and assumptions, is about to crumble. Lawyer son Leo ducks his own wedding to abscond with Helen, the wife of another rabbi. Literary agent Frances, a failed mother and disappointed wife, is on the verge of a breakdown. Son Simeon may be both a sex and drug addict, and pretty Emily has started an affair with Jay, who looks like a very attractive boy but isn’t. Claudia’s husband Norman has concealed the fact that his latest obscure biography is likely to be a literary sensation that will eclipse her new book, a combination of memoir and handbook on the subject of family, the success of which is essential for financial reasons as well as Claudia’s self-esteem. So the family façade must be preserved at all costs. However, Frances has begun to lust after Jay, Norman is involved with another woman and Leo finds he cannot give Helen up. Matters come to a head at the Passover Seder, which also celebrates Helen’s publication but sees Frances walking out on her family. It’s Claudia’s own secret which eventually assists Leo and Frances to grow up and leave home, allowing Mendelson’s caustic satire to conclude on a note of forgiveness.
Slender, often farcical events are significantly enhanced by astute, affectionately mocking prose and a wicked but merciful intelligence.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-88343-1
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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