An enchanting cabinet of curiosities and wonders.
Nine tales of human endurance, accomplishment, and epiphany told with style and brio.
Mason is one of our best historical novelists, creating panoramas of rich detail, propulsive plot, and artful character development in novels such as The Piano Tuner (2002) and The Winter Soldier (2018). In his first story collection, he shows how quickly and completely he can immerse readers in a foreign place and time. “Death of the Pugilist, or The Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw” is—if you’ll forgive the wordplay—a knockout punch: 17 short, numbered rounds recounting the life of a Bristol stevedore whose fate awaits him in the ring of an 1824 boxing match so vividly described you can almost taste the blood. (Yes, the title is a spoiler.) “The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace” follows an English “bug collector” and “species man” who is “entranced by life’s variety” to go to the Malay Archipelago, where, burning with fever, he concocts a theory of the natural world: “Everywhere he looked he saw the struggle for existence. He could not happen upon an insect without wondering how every trait had saved it from nature’s forge.” Did we mention that this real-life, little-remembered figure is also a correspondent of the great and celebrated Charles Darwin, whose return letters mysteriously cease once the theory has been shared? In “The Line Agent Pascal,” the titular Frenchman maintains a solitary railway station deep in the Amazon rainforest, his only human connection coming, Twitter-like, with other agents along the telegraph line. “However distant his colleagues were, he’d come to understand them intimately over the years, could describe each man, each station, with details he had never seen,” Mason writes. A pair of stories with female protagonists—one an 18th-century hot air balloonist—offer relief from an overwhelmingly male cast.
An enchanting cabinet of curiosities and wonders.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-47763-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing...
Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past.
Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the “sociopath” Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef. And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from a Taliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending.
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 1-57322-245-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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