Not exactly Catherine and Heathcliff, but still an engaging journey through passion and redemption.
Man gets girl…man loses girl…man gets (new) girl.
While the plot is hardly new, Merritt (Possessed by Shadows, 2005, etc.) rings some changes on the old tune. The shadow of Hemingway looms over the style, and even aspects of the plot and setting, of the narrative, but most of the action plays out off the coast of Kona, Hawaii, rather than, say, off the coast of Cuba. The male-fantasy woman here is Victoria Novak, of whose incandescent beauty and sexual readiness we’re constantly reminded. The doomed lover is Morgan Cary, who at the beginning of the novel mournfully returns to Hawaii to lament his wife’s putative suicide, for which he feels responsible. Cary, an itinerant fisherman, writer and doctorate candidate, has done the unforgivable: He has “stolen” Victoria away from Tioni Brown, a native Hawaiian who’s also Cary’s deckhand and best friend. Passion has its own rules, however, so Cary and Victoria leave Hawaii for what they hope will be the emotionally warmer climes of southern California, where Cary can find a more stable life than that offered by fishing off the Kona coast. He pens Decompression, a moderately successful novel; gives up the academic life (except for teaching creative writing to an adoring throng of fans); and makes the grievous mistake of having a torrid affair with Emily, his most talented student. This sexual escapade doesn’t escape the notice of the increasingly tormented and emotionally unstable Victoria, who overdoses on pills, giving Cary reason to feel a great deal of grief as the possible cause of her death. Cary comes back to life by developing a fatherly relationship with Ben Iki, the grandson of his piscatorial mentor, and a healing love relationship with Ben’s mother, one that is far more moderate than his scorching relationship with Victoria.
Not exactly Catherine and Heathcliff, but still an engaging journey through passion and redemption.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59051-306-4
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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