The return to the Pacific Northwest and introspective characters finds the author striking familiar, responsive chords.
Some of the best stories in this uneven collection suggest a return to form for a writer better known for his novels.
Guterson’s first story collection in 15 years should appeal to fans of his debut novel (Snow Falling on Cedars, 1994) who might have found the dark, antic humor of his most recent one (Ed King, 2011) jarring. Many of these stories concern the awkwardness of intimacy, how uncomfortable it can be—particularly in the Internet age, which has had such a profound effect on how people understand their own lives and each other. The first story, "Paradise," sets the tone and theme; it concerns two middle-aged people traveling to consummate a relationship that began through an online dating service. They barely know each other except for the narratives they have conjured, and the unnamed man has particular concerns: “He told her he didn’t know what would happen in bed. He said he hadn’t slept with anyone but his wife for twenty-six years—then add on the six months since she’d died of a heart attack while in the middle of leaving him for someone new.” The woman ultimately tells her story, which casts her in a different light than he had imagined, in a tale that resists sentimentality or pat resolution. Many of the rest feature similar difficulties in connecting: the landlord and the title character of “Tenant” (whose interplay is restricted to email and bank transfers until they finally meet in person); the adult brother and sister in “Pilanesberg” (he visits her in Africa, where she is dying of cancer). Many of the stories hit similar notes, in which self-conscious characters discover that “no matter what you did, you were wrong.”
The return to the Pacific Northwest and introspective characters finds the author striking familiar, responsive chords.Pub Date: June 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-35148-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
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
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