CARRYING THE BODY

Name: CARRYING THE BODY
Author: Dawn Raffel
ISBN: 0-7432-2863-4

by Dawn Raffel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2002

Rambling and obscure, this ultimately incoherent story never convinces you of the pertinence (much less importance) of the...

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A virtually unreadable debut novella by O, The Oprah Magazine editor Raffel (short fiction: In the Year of Long Division, 1995).

The story is basically about an unhappy family: Elise (usually referred to as “the mother”) returns to the childhood home she had run away from years earlier with her lover (referred to as “the lover”). She returns without the lover, however, bringing instead her sickly son James (usually referred to as “the boy”), who is not in very good shape at all. Elise’s own mother (referred to as “Mother”) died some years before, and while her father (“the father”) is still alive, he doesn’t get around much anymore and the place is kind of a dump. Elise’s sister (always called “the aunt”) is still around, and she looks after the boy while Elise pokes around the house looking for something she seems to have left behind. The aunt is a drunk, and at night she settles down with her nipper of gin and tells the boy a meandering version of the “Three Little Pigs” that becomes stranger and more meandering each night. There are long descriptions of the house—a once very grand house, apparently, built by the father—that make it sound very ominous and creepy. There are also long stretches of pointless dialogue (“ ‘Please,’ said the child.” / “ ‘No,’ said the aunt.” / “ ‘Drink?’ said the child. ‘Some?’ ” / “ ‘Not for you,’ the aunt said” / “ ‘Want it,’ the child said.” / “ ‘This isn’t what you think it is.’ ” / “ ‘Juice?’ ” / “ ‘No juice,’ said the aunt. ‘This is gin’ ”) that sound like the cuttings from David Mamet’s floor, while the narration is sonorous and deliberately overwrought (“The place was not the aunt’s. Suppose, for the sake of argument, the place was the father’s”). The ending, which doesn’t really make clear what Elise was looking for or whether she makes peace with her family, doesn’t succeed in making much sense of the proceedings.

Rambling and obscure, this ultimately incoherent story never convinces you of the pertinence (much less importance) of the events it describes.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-7432-2863-4

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. COUNEY
by Dawn Raffel

- BOOK REVIEW
IN THE YEAR OF LONG DIVISION
by Dawn Raffel

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GOLDFINCH
by Donna Tartt

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LITTLE FRIEND
by Donna Tartt

- SEEN & HEARD
Podcast Will Explore Bennington College Lit Trio

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‘The Secret History’ Is New ‘Today’ Book Club Pick

- SEEN & HEARD
Jenna Bush Hager Launching Author Podcast

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THINGS FALL APART

by Chinua Achebe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 23, 1958

This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.

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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.