One more eloquent plea for freedom and tolerance from an accomplished writer and conscience of her country.
A first novel from noted activist Duong, whose work is currently banned in Vietnam, is as disturbingly powerful in its depiction of totalitarianism as her later were to be (Memories of a Pure Spring, 2000, etc.).
Though her prose is at times cloyingly lyrical, Duong’s story itself is a grim reminder of the price tyranny exacts. She offers memorable portraits of 1980s Hanoi in introducing three characters who all face moral crises about the way they live. Too subtle to make their dilemma a polemic, Duong is also too honest to discount the political implications of their situations, and, though the themes she raises are universal, they have an immediate and compelling relevance for Vietnam. Beautiful and idealistic literature teacher Linh no longer loves her husband Nguyen, a once-idolized former professor who’s now a hack journalist producing what his editors want. While ashamed of his compliance, he sees no alternative if he is to provide a good living for Linh and their daughter Huong Ly. Unhappy and restless, Linh drifts into an affair with noted composer Tran Phuong, a married man and notorious womanizer currently out of favor with the regime. Tran seems to Linh everything Nguyen is not, but Tran, who longs for the perks of acceptance (“the white Moscovic car gliding across the courtyard”), is prepared to pay the necessary price. Linh is penalized by the school authorities for leaving her husband and having an affair; Nguyen, meanwhile, still deeply in love with Linh, faces a moral dilemma at work: whether to write the truth about a senior official accused of raping young women or keep quiet. As all three wrestle with their consciences, Linh, whose youthful idealism has been tempered by reality, understands that life endures in spite of “the ruins. In spite of the lies.”
One more eloquent plea for freedom and tolerance from an accomplished writer and conscience of her country.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-6417-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
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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