A debut collection from Danticat (the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, 1994) that movingly brings to life the history, hopes, and human experience of Haitians. Separation is the central fact of life for Danticat's characters. The isolated speakers of "Children of the Sea" are lovers, one of whom flees Haiti on a rickety boat while the other remains on the island hiding from terrorizing soldiers. They are doomed never again to be together in the flesh. Yet the story itself — the very act of Danticat's writing (mirrored in the refugee's journal-keeping) — permits their union, grants a space in which their voices mingle in an elegant duet. Where writing can't serve as a weapon against oblivion, there is hope, though this is double-edged. For Guy, the unemployed factory worker in "A Wall of Fire Rising," a hot-air balloon represents an escape from devastating poverty, but the story ends by showing the bitter irony of his wish for flight. Most impressive is the dignity that the author reveals in her characters' spirituality. Omens and superstitions abound, which upper-class Haitians dismiss as "voodoo nonsense that's holding us back." Danticat shows the wisdom and poignancy of these beliefs. The red panties that the mother in "Caroline's Wedding" commands her daughters to wear serve ostensibly to ward off sexual advances from their dead father's spirit. They are also an intimate form of mourning his loss. "When you write," explains the speaker of "Epilogue: Women Like Us," "it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse strands and attempting to bring them unity....Some of the braids are long, others short. Some are thick, others are thin." The remark describes this young Haitian writer's restless style, which is lyrical and elegiac, gothic and simple, sometimes all at once. Consistent, however, is her powerful empathy for her characters. Danticat's fiction is an antidote to headline abstractions, giving readers the gift of narrative through which to experience a people and a country as more than mere news.
Pub Date: April 10, 1995
ISBN: 1-56947-025-1
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
Nine eerie tales mainly concerning supernatural, sometimes horrifying, conundrums confronted by (usually) contemporary American Jews—in a second collection (Stories of an Imaginary Childhood, 1992—not reviewed) from the author of the dark, occasionally diverting fantasy novel Sandman's Dust (1986). Many of these stories sport a surprise—and often a nasty one- -at the close. In ``Gematria,'' a precious-stones dealer in Manhattan discovers that the special kind of emerald demanded by a (literally) murderous female customer is not what he'd supposed. Bouncy Alan Lapidus—in the most amusing piece here—plunges energetically into what he's sure will be the successful pursuit of ``The Big Metzia'' (bargain) in destitute but trade-needy Russia; he whoops it up in the former Evil Empire with the misty aid of a bewildering factotum, the all-knowing but—as it turns out— startlingly two-faced Igor. In ``Old Words for New,'' Professor Phragus, an Egyptologist, makes an otherworldly discovery in the cellar of an ancient temple. Other stories offer stirring reminders of the Holocaust: An assimilated Jewish lawyer ponders his insulated life, confronts a clammy link to a past of death and terror, and watches a silent film of Himmler messily killing pet chickens. The founder of ``The Library of Moloch''—survivor stories on tape—dies, jealous of the survivors' faith, in flames. The author also indulges in some theological cutups in ``The Devil and the Dutchman,'' in which a rabbi has a discussion with a rather tentative, bothered devil who's brought up short by the rabbi's demand: ``You want to meet the big fella?...Can't do it...I've got a few questions I'd like to ask myself.'' Bukiet's mordant twists and turns of invention have the squirmy tone of science-fiction mags, and his bitter, however admirable, sentiments are set in somewhat shrill hyperbole. Overall, then: readable tales of uneven quality.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-100083-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
A second collection, including six stories and a novella, by the worldly-wise (and evidently well-traveled) author of last year’s crackling, cosmopolitan debut volume, Thirst. This time, all the pieces are set in Russia and are convincingly redolent of that country’s history, landscapes, and culture. The novella “Peredelkino,” for example, offers an amusing picture of the literary vocation in the story of Rem Petrovich, a minor novelist and critic who is assigned the review of a massive historical novel written by one “L.I. Brezhnev,” falls for a calculating beauty whose turgid novels become runaway bestsellers, and tiptoes precariously along the good side of the all-powerful Writers” Union. The story is too long, but it’s filled with wry, knowing digs at the Russian literary establishment’s ponderous self-importance. “Salt,” in brisk fable-like fashion, pillories the quick-fix approach to the country’s seemingly unending economic problems—and “Orbit” hilariously fictionalizes the earthbound priorities indulged by Russia’s first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, assured that his 1961 “flight would make the definitive argument sent for socialism.” Three stories strike deeper. “Birobizdan” is the Shangri-la, located near the Chinese border, where Russia’s Jews believe (erroneously) they—ll be permitted to settle in the new post-Revolutionary paradise ruled by “Comrade Stalin.” “Anzhelika, 13” memorably encapsulates the populace’s intimidation by Stalin in the story of an adolescent girl who believes that her budding sexuality has caused the Beloved Leader’s death. And the brilliant “PU-239” mines genuine comic terror from the tale of a nuclear engineer who receives a fatal dose of radiation during a reactor accident, plots to support the family that will survive him by selling stolen “fissile material,” and unwisely strikes a deal with a murderous hoodlum—quite unintentionally unleashing Armageddon. Imaginative, densely detailed stories that open a window on a world perhaps more remote now than ever before. Kalfus’s crafty, nerve-rattling tales are among the most unusual and interesting now being written.
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1999
ISBN: 1-57131-029-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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