Too pompous to be disgusting, this remains just a bore.
A morbid and lugubrious tale by playwright Chapman (Rest Area, 2002).
From the first sentence (“Read, for this is my body”), it’s clear that a painfully serious narrative is going to cut slack for no one—the reader least of all. Two primary characters are involved: Will Colby and Phil Winters, both recently bereaved. Will is a merchant marine who has been married half a year to his childhood sweetheart Shelly. Off at sea for long stretches of time, he’s just returned from his latest cruise (aboard the SS Farewell), eager to be reunited with his wife—but instead he finds her dead body in the kitchen when he lets himself in. Not one to be easily put off, Will packs Shelly into the trunk and decides to go ahead with their postponed honeymoon to Florida. By an odd coincidence, Phil Winters has a very similar idea at nearly that exact moment: He’s just set off for a road trip with the corpse of his son Kevin, who drove a van full of teenagers into a swamp some months back. Phil’s estranged wife Margaret doesn’t share his enthusiasm for the idea of one last trip with her son, and the parents of the other kids killed in Kevin’s van (they’ve formed a grief therapy group called Mourning Glory) are content with funerals and floral bouquets for their deceased. When Will and Phil meet up on their respective pilgrimages, they are both on I-95—one of them going south, the other north. You get the idea. But before their big bang-up, we get to meet a motel manager who collects roadkill, a pregnant toll-collector who gives birth in her booth, and a one-armed boy to whom Will gives a piece of his wife (nicely wrapped up in a cooler).
Too pompous to be disgusting, this remains just a bore.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7868-6738-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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