Occasionally moving but more often overwrought, Grossman’s latest novel is not his finest.
Three generations of women confront a shared legacy of trauma.
When Nina was 6 years old, her mother was imprisoned on Goli Otok, an island off the coast of what was then Yugoslavia, after refusing to denounce her husband for his allegedly Stalinist sympathies. Nina and her mother, Vera, survived the three-year ordeal, but with lingering scars. Grossman’s latest novel is an account of their belated attempt to confront those scars and the extent to which they might have contributed to their own suffering. In the mid-1950s, Vera and Nina took off for Israel, where Vera remarried, becoming the matriarch of a sprawling family, and Nina launched a disparate, sexually promiscuous life. The first part of Grossman’s novel, in which Vera’s family holds a 90th birthday party for her and Nina’s adult daughter, Gili, reflects on her own parents’ relationship, is the most moving. As the novel progresses, though, it begins to feel overdetermined. The device Grossman uses to tell the story—Gili is a documentary filmmaker recording conversations about the past—isn’t an entirely necessary one. In fact, all the asides about turning cameras on or off, zooming in or out, distract from the more important—and more interesting—details. Worse is the way that Grossman pushes the pathos of the story to its breaking point, and then beyond. Together with her mother, father, and grandmother, Gili visits Goli Otok, where they all confront not only the climax of their shared story, but also a literal storm that leaves them stranded overnight. Grossman, a justly celebrated Israeli novelist, could have done a lot more with a lot less.
Occasionally moving but more often overwrought, Grossman’s latest novel is not his finest.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31891-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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