by David Roy ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2015
A simple story well told, full of local history and Kiwi lore.
Roy delves into a family’s history in his debut novel, inspired by true events.
Marty Pawson is a divorced New Zealand software consultant. His life in Auckland seems pointless and without dignity (“phone charger back in its usual socket, its tiny green light pretending everything’s okay. All in its humdrum place”). Boorish with women and emotionally aloof, he suffers from profound banality; even his greatest challenges—divorce, alimony, sullen teenagers—seem sadly pedestrian. His late great-aunt Julia, whom he never met and only knows through a small cache of letters found after his mother’s funeral, led a very different kind of life. Marty slowly pieces together her existence: raised in Britain, she married a soldier from New Zealand in the aftermath of World War I and returned with him to the Otago high country, where she suspiciously died at the age of 20. Soon Marty is off on a fact-finding trip to remote Kinross Flat to dig through local archives and uncover secrets of postwar New Zealand—where the waving flags barely concealed widespread destitution and where survivors of the war were often more unlucky than those who never came home: “A few generations back, tragedy was normal,” Marty notes. Roy’s narrative technique is nothing fancy; instead, he bets on twin conceits: that one’s own family history is always surprisingly interesting, and that the same holds true for someone else’s. This gamble mostly pays off. The book does suffer from overly convenient plot devices, such as Marty’s friend Dan, a techie with near-instant access to public records, and a flashback to the 1960s, involving a journalist who wears her hair in a “severe bun,” is just a distraction. Also, Roy’s attempt to channel a sheepdog’s perspective may horrify Jack London fans. In any event, such gimmicks are unnecessary, as the strength of the novel lies in its straightforwardness. As Roy goes on an intergenerational walkabout through rural New Zealand, readers will be glad they went along.
A simple story well told, full of local history and Kiwi lore.Pub Date: May 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5086-9489-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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