With Major’s attention to rhythm and the musicality of language, the result is a delightful feast for the senses.
Poet/painter/novelist Major (From Now On: New and Selected Poems 1970-2015, 2015, etc.) gives us a new collection of 23 short stories that explore the full range of the human condition.
“Temporary Business,” the opening tale, concerns itself with the potent drama of two people who have just begun to live together. With her own marriage in crisis, Isa, described as being intelligent, with “a great splash of red hair” and a “musical voice,” has invited herself to stay with Edward, an old friend of her mother’s, and figure out what she wants next. Wading through the undercurrents of sexual tension, Isa and Edward bicker over his eating habits and “make love in the afternoon, lying across the bed, half-dressed.” Major brilliantly hones in on the specific, detailed moments of their lives to articulate the intricacies of character and relationships, like bright swatches of color across a dark canvas. Here is an elegant union of craftsmanship and emotional truth. Further into the collection, Major showcases his ability to use different styles to enhance the telling of a tale. The title story is a Shakespearean monologue of death and family drama set during the hottest days of a Chicago summer, couched in the guise of a single phone call. Of particular note is the frank, matter-of-fact exploration of sexuality that permeates various tales, among them “Gelasia’s Problem,” “Girl in a Boat,” and “Driving Kenneth Home.” Here we have the best of literary fiction: visceral characters and compelling plots. However, the brief length Major favors sometimes precludes a level of reflection that would add depth to each individual piece.
With Major’s attention to rhythm and the musicality of language, the result is a delightful feast for the senses.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9968973-2-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Unquestionably the finest novel of the present century—and we may be saying the same thing 92 years from now.
Life and art, death and transfiguration reverberate with protean intensity in the late (1953–2003) Chilean author’s final work: a mystery and quest novel of unparalleled richness.
Published posthumously in a single volume, despite its author’s instruction that it appear as five distinct novels, it’s a symphonic envisioning of moral and societal collapse, which begins with a mordantly amusing account (“The Part About the Critics”) of the efforts of four literary scholars to discover the obscured personal history and unknown present whereabouts of German novelist Benno von Archimboldi, an itinerant recluse rumored to be a likely Nobel laureate. Their searches lead them to northern Mexico, in a desert area notorious for the unsolved murders of hundreds of Mexican women presumably seeking freedom by crossing the U.S. border. In the novel’s second book, a Spanish academic (Amalfitano) now living in Mexico fears a similar fate threatens his beautiful daughter Rosa. It’s followed by the story of a black American journalist whom Rosa encounters, in a subplot only imperfectly related to the main narrative. Then, in “The Part About the Crimes,” the stories of the murdered women and various people in their lives (which echo much of the content of Bolaño’s other late mega-novel The Savage Detectives) lead to a police investigation that gradually focuses on the fugitive Archimboldi. Finally, “The Part About Archimboldi” introduces the figure of Hans Reiter, an artistically inclined young German growing up in Hitler’s shadow, living what amounts to an allegorical representation of German culture in extremis, and experiencing transformations that will send him halfway around the world; bring him literary success, consuming love and intolerable loss; and culminate in a destiny best understood by Reiter’s weary, similarly bereaved and burdened sister Lotte: “He’s stopped existing.” Bolaño’s gripping, increasingly astonishing fiction echoes the world-encompassing masterpieces of Stendhal, Mann, Grass, Pynchon and García Márquez, in a consummate display of literary virtuosity powered by an emotional thrust that can rip your heart out.
Unquestionably the finest novel of the present century—and we may be saying the same thing 92 years from now.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-374-10014-8
Page Count: 912
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
