Chambers’ tone is sweet, which is not the same as saccharine.
In the spirit of Barbara Pym's novels and the classic film Brief Encounters, Chambers provides an updated portrait of the vaunted British upper lip and its associated postwar values.
When the suburban North Kent Echo runs a story on parthenogenesis in small animals, it gets a curious letter to the editor in response: "I have always believed my own daughter (now ten) to have been born without the involvement of any man," writes Mrs. Gretchen Tilbury of Sidcup. When the opportunity arises to investigate this intriguing virgin birth, Jean Swinney is eager to take on the assignment; it will be a nice distraction from her usual humdrum work. Given the social patterns of 1950s Britain, Jean’s beat consists chiefly of feature pieces of appeal to housewives, money-saving tips, recipes, and the like. Jean’s personal life is equally nonstimulating, as she shares a joyless home with her agoraphobic and needy mother, and she finds a welcome respite in her growing attachment to the Tilbury family. As clues to the mystery of “Our Lady of Sidcup” gradually reveal themselves to Jean, she finds herself in a relationship that might provide her with a last chance at domestic contentment. An awareness of the high cost of that potential happiness weighs heavily on Jean, and a bittersweet aura pervades Chambers’ gentle sketch of an unassuming, highly intelligent woman daring to contravene convention. In a departure from similar, yet tamer, depictions of postwar English life, Chambers acknowledges a broad range of human experience. Jean’s foibles, along with those of her irksome mother and other characters, are presented with sympathy, but readers in search of comfortable solutions will have to reassess their need to tie everything up with a vintage-style bow.
Chambers’ tone is sweet, which is not the same as saccharine.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-309472-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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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