German writer Kehlmann (Fame, 2010, etc.) takes us on a strange and enigmatic journey here.
An elusive novel whose events remain cryptic and largely unexplained.
The central event of the novel occurs in 1984, when Arthur Friedland takes his three sons to see the Great Lindemann, a hypnotist, in a public performance. The oldest son is Martin, and the other two (by a different mother) are twins Ivan and Eric. They have not been close—in fact, they scarcely know each other at all—but their appearance with their father that afternoon in some ways informs the rest of their lives. The unemployed Arthur boasts to Lindemann: "You can’t hypnotize me….I know how [hypnotism] works" and suggests that the hypnotist find a more pliant subject. Lindemann does, however, succeed in hypnotizing Arthur, and during hypnosis, Arthur reveals that he wants to get away from his current life. The next day, Arthur takes his passport, cleans out his bank account and sends a telegram to his wife, informing her that he’ll be away a long time. The narrative then shifts to Arthur’s sons, now grown men. Martin has converted to Roman Catholicism and become a priest. (He's also an expert solver of the Rubik’s Cube puzzle and participates in national contests.) Eric becomes a fraudulent investor who can’t get through a day without doses of anti-anxiety and antidepressant medicines, and Ivan becomes an art forger in league with the mediocre, yet in-demand, artist whose work he fakes. Meanwhile, the reclusive Arthur has become a best-selling author whose cynical semiautobiographical book, My Name Is No One, featuring a main character named “F,” has led to a rash of suicides by readers who take its message of hopelessness to heart.
German writer Kehlmann (Fame, 2010, etc.) takes us on a strange and enigmatic journey here.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-307-91181-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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