An American writer is prompted by receipt of a mysterious package to reflect upon the pivotal moment of his life.
Thomas Nesbitt, a moderately successful travel writer and memoirist, administers the coup de grâce to his faltering marriage when, without his wife’s knowledge, he buys a cottage in Maine. He’s planning to live out his retirement in seclusion when a box arrives from overseas. The return address is that of Thomas’ one-time fiancée, Petra Dussmann. This catapults Thomas and the narrative into an extended flashback going back decades, to 1984, when he arrived in Berlin planning to write about life on both sides of the yet to be dismantled Wall. He moves into a flat sublet by a gay British painter with a heroin habit. Thomas seeks freelance assignments from a U.S.-backed radio station, where his first story is translated into German by Petra Dussmann, a refugee from East Berlin. The two fall effortlessly in love. Up to that point, this bulky novel lags a bit, but the action accelerates when Petra recounts her story. Married to Jurgen, a wunderkind playwright who is driven mad by government repression of his work, Petra has just given birth to son Johannes when Jurgen is arrested. Her own arrest and imprisonment follow: apparently her best friend has been a Stasi informer all along. Jurgen kills himself, Johannes is adopted by a Stasi-approved couple and Petra is traded to the West for some East German agents. As their love deepens Thomas offers to use his American privilege of entering East Berlin to procure some cherished memorabilia of Johannes. However, Petra hasn’t told Thomas everything, and what he doesn’t know will devastate them both. Kennedy’s work harkens back to an earlier era of big novels à la James Michener and Herman Wouk, which is perhaps why—regrettably—he is still more widely read abroad than in his native land. Despite his rambling pace, Kennedy’s evocative prose makes the eventual spellbinding finish worth the trip.
Pub Date: May 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8079-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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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