THE CRACK

Name: THE CRACK
Author: Christopher Radmann
ISBN: 978-1-78074-399-8

by Christopher Radmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2014

The novel is without the seething indignation of firsthand chroniclers such as Gordimer, Brink and Coetzee, but it succeeds...

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A corrosive tale of life in the waning years of the apartheid regime, when a thousand assumptions are shattered as white privilege declines.

Housewife, mother of three “silver darlings” and eminent cocooner, Janet isn’t entirely oblivious to the world outside, but when a crack appears in her swimming pool, ominously, on Jan. 1, 1976, she tries to contain the damage to her backyard and her interior life. That’s not so easy to do, given that life beyond the gates is clamoring to make itself heard. Even so, when, later, she takes her black gardener to the hardware store to get materials to patch the crack, she’s dimly surprised that he’s ordered to stay outside, as if the country beyond her garden wall is a foreign land. Even her husband, a policeman whose “fingers were the size of fists,” can’t turn back history. Yet Janet keeps trying to shelter herself and her family from a changing South Africa, even as the crack grows more noticeable—and, as it does, becomes ever more a part of her psyche, so that she can feel the gardener’s insistent brush “scrape her very insides like she was the pool and nightmare was about to spring loose.” As Radmann moves his story along, it’s increasingly clear that Janet’s determined myopia is a defense mechanism that helps her escape the bruising injustices of her society, injustices her husband is more than instrumental in delivering. Janet is a haunted, anxiety-ridden soul, and her worries lend Radmann’s book a claustrophobic feeling. Still, despite occasional bouts of staccato overwriting—“It was the need. The need nudged her. As needs must.”—Radmann’s story holds up well. And though the symbol of the cracked swimming pool as metaphor for the disintegration of both a nation and a marriage is perhaps too obvious, Radmann works it judiciously.

The novel is without the seething indignation of firsthand chroniclers such as Gordimer, Brink and Coetzee, but it succeeds in conveying a sense of how life under political evil works—or doesn’t.

Pub Date: June 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-78074-399-8

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Oneworld Publications

Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THIS IS HAPPINESS

by Niall Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 3, 2019

A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.

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The heart-expanding extremes of life—first love and last rites—are experienced by an unsettled young Dubliner spending one exceptional spring in a small Irish village.

Christy McMahon “walked this line between the comic and the poignant,” and so does Williams (History of the Rain, 2014, etc.) in his latest novel, another long, affectionate, meandering story, this one devoted to the small rural community of Faha, which is about to change forever with the coming of electricity to the parish. Delighting in the eccentricities of speech, behavior, and attitude of the local characters, Williams spins a tale of life lessons and loves new and old, as observed from the perspective of Noel Crowe, 17 when the book’s events take place, some six decades older as he narrates them. Noel’s home is in Dublin, where he was training to become a Catholic priest, but he's lost his faith and retreated to the home of his grandparents Doady and Ganga in Faha. Easter is coming, and the weather—normally infinite varieties of rain—turns sunny as electrical workers cover the countryside, erecting poles and connecting wires. Christy, a member of the electrical workforce, comes to lodge alongside Noel in Doady and Ganga's garret but has another motive: He’s here to find and seek forgiveness from the woman he abandoned at the altar 50 years earlier. While tracing this quest, Williams sets Noel on his own love trajectory as he falls first for one, then all of the daughters of the local doctor. These interactions are framed against a portrait of village life—the church, the Gaelic football, the music, the alcohol—and its personalities. Warm and whimsical, sometimes sorrowful, but always expressed in curlicues of Irish lyricism, this charming book makes varied use of its electrical metaphor, not least to express the flickering pulse of humanity.

A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.

Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-63557-420-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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TIME OF THE CHILD
by Niall Williams

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IN KILTUMPER
by Niall Williams with Christine Breen ; illustrated by Christine Breen

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HISTORY OF THE RAIN
by Niall Williams

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A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

by Khaled Hosseini ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2007

Another artistic triumph, and surefire bestseller, for this fearless writer.

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This Afghan-American author follows his debut (The Kite Runner, 2003) with a fine risk-taking novel about two victimized but courageous Afghan women.

Mariam is a bastard. Her mother was a housekeeper for a rich businessman in Herat, Afghanistan, until he impregnated and banished her. Mariam’s childhood ended abruptly when her mother hanged herself. Her father then married off the 15-year-old to Rasheed, a 40ish shoemaker in Kabul, hundreds of miles away. Rasheed is a deeply conventional man who insists that Mariam wear a burqa, though many women are going uncovered (it’s 1974). Mariam lives in fear of him, especially after numerous miscarriages. In 1987, the story switches to a neighbor, nine-year-old Laila, her playmate Tariq and her parents. It’s the eighth year of Soviet occupation—bad for the nation, but good for women, who are granted unprecedented freedoms. Kabul’s true suffering begins in 1992. The Soviets have gone, and rival warlords are tearing the city apart. Before he leaves for Pakistan, Tariq and Laila make love; soon after, her parents are killed by a rocket. The two storylines merge when Rasheed and Mariam shelter the solitary Laila. Rasheed has his own agenda; the 14-year-old will become his second wife, over Mariam’s objections, and give him an heir, but to his disgust Laila has a daughter, Aziza; in time, he’ll realize Tariq is the father. The heart of the novel is the gradual bonding between the girl-mother and the much older woman. Rasheed grows increasingly hostile, even frenzied, after an escape by the women is foiled. Relief comes when Laila gives birth to a boy, but it’s short-lived. The Taliban are in control; women must stay home; Rasheed loses his business; they have no food; Aziza is sent to an orphanage. The dramatic final section includes a murder and an execution. Despite all the pain and heartbreak, the novel is never depressing; Hosseini barrels through each grim development unflinchingly, seeking illumination.

Another artistic triumph, and surefire bestseller, for this fearless writer.