Bram, whose last novel (Father of Frankenstein, 1995) focused on Hollywood in the 1930s, makes a bold, imaginative leap with considerable skill in this new tale, taking on gay involvement in the '90s Republican comeback in Washington. East Village bookstore worker Ralph Eckhart, a vague, progressive fellow with a few powerful friends, a prominent gay activist and a senator's chief speechwriter among them, is gliding happily through life when he agrees to meet someone from an Internet chatroom and finds his core beliefs challenged. The date, Washington-based Bill O'Connor, is a good kisser, but he's also a rising Republican star, a right-wing journalist with a book trashing Hillary about to come out. Strange bedfellows indeed, Ralph and Bill hit it off, even going together to a Christian Coalition conference on the family where Bill is the featured speaker. But when Ralph discovers that his lover's book also accuses a lesbian speechwriter, his best friend, of an affair with her boss, he indignantly ends the relationship. Unfortunately, Bill is murdered soon after their breakup, and Ralph is jailed as the prime suspect. His activist friend Nick jumps to his defense, making his a cause cÇläbre exemplifying knee-jerk homophobia, but as the media machine cranks up in his favor, Ralph is shaken to discover that Nick is in fact also an FBI informer, and the one who turned him in. Freed before the case comes to trial, Ralph then unwittingly stumbles on the trail of the real murderer and has to face the consequences. It's hard to bring this sort of story off with such a low-key protagonist, and the plot has more than a few idle moments. But ultimately this is a closely wrought psychological portrait of both a decent man and the sharply divided gay world he inhabits. In hindsight, the story seems at least as subtle as it is slow. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 14, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-93914-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
