A laborious attempt at philosophical theater.
A fantastical debut novel set during the Spanish Inquisition explores the distance between reality and dreams.
Antonio, the patriarch of the Tomé family in Madrid and an architect, announces at a gathering that he’s received a commission to build “a great altar in a great cathedral” in Toledo, and so the family is moving there. Once in Toledo, Esperanza, the wife of Antonio’s son, Narciso, experiences a series of erotically charged dreams in which she inhabits the body of another woman, Nora. In this nocturnal fantasy, Nora has a torrid affair with Narciso. Daniel Karpinski relentlessly interrogates the interstices between the real and the hallucinatory—Esperanza’s dreams at first seem like unconscious expressions of her own frustrations with waking life. But then they seem like prophecies when these imaginings start to leak into the world. Esperanza makes the acquaintance of Nora del Pulpo. Then Nora’s husband, Miguel, a public prosecutor, discovers the real affair between his wife and Narciso. As a result, Narciso is forced to clandestinely flee from the unmerciful judgment of the Inquisition. The book—translated from the Polish by Max Karpinski—is filled with fabulist contraventions of stark reality. Esperanza stumbles on an apparition in the basement, and Narciso conveys himself in a flying basket he operates with his mind. The story is composed in novelistic form, but each chapter begins with a short summary that often includes stage notes, as if the drama were designed to be performed in a theater. Daniel Karpinski is endlessly imaginative, and his massive philosophical ambitions are impressive. But the plot is agonizingly convoluted, and the author seems to consider readers’ bewilderment a sign of the tale’s sophistication. The prose is impenetrably dense and strains far too energetically for philosophical refinement. Even the chapter prefaces become confusedly entangled: “Doña Esperanza Tomé, disguised as Narciso Tomé, uses Maja, the former shop assistant, to deceive doña Nora del Pulpo, whose body, not too long ago, doña Esperanza used to betray herself with her own husband, who she now pretends to be.”
A laborious attempt at philosophical theater.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2368-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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