An imaginative work of oneiric fiction by a master practitioner that may prove a bit too fantastic for many audiences.
A Romanian writer chronicles the writing of a novel about a truck driver.
This slim, deeply surreal novel by the exiled Romanian writer Tsepeneag (Hotel Europa, 2010, etc.) is quite deft in its execution but also carries enough literary and political baggage to weigh down all but the most academic of readers. Nominally, the book lets readers into the busy mind of a writer in the midst of composing a novel about a Bulgarian truck driver named Tsvetan making his way across Europe and the driver’s complex relationship with a French exotic dancer named Beatrice. In reality, this unnamed narrator is composing a story about himself, although the novel’s reality shifts on unsteady ground. The narrator’s wife, Marianne, is in New York for an unspecified medical treatment. She is the rock the narrator breaks himself on trying to please; he writes to her constantly to get her feedback on his new writing style, which he describes as “like a building site beneath the open sky.” Meanwhile, the narrator meets a young Slovak novelist at a cocktail party, which ignites a thorny affair. Strangely, most of these characters are drawn from Tsepeneag’s earliest work (Exercises, 1966), which was translated by Alain Paruit—who is also a character here and whose untimely death shakes the narrator to his core. Ultimately, the novel almost serves as a eulogy for the author’s own writing. The narrator complains bitterly to Marianne: “I don’t believe in what I’m writing and, since I can’t write unless I think I’ve found something new, it’s torture.” He even complains about his own novel’s ending, which reveals its events had been a dream. “What I mean is that it would become nothing more than a device, which nobody would believe any more,” he tells us.
An imaginative work of oneiric fiction by a master practitioner that may prove a bit too fantastic for many audiences.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-56478-698-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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