A strange, hallucinatory work.
From Turkish novelist Shafak (The Saint of Incipient Insanities, 2004, etc.), a richly layered narrative concerning misfits and how society views them.
The story of a Victorian-era circus impresario improbably named Keramet Mumî Keske Memis Efendi galvanizes the other dramatis personae in this mishmash. Born the only son in a family of six sisters, Efendi has a transparent face, as if made of wax, and his aunt must literally form his eyes into slits. Because of his suffering in a newly modern society where appearances are of supreme importance, Efendi develops an ability to see what others cannot; he resolves to create a theater of spectacles in the city of Pera under a cherry-colored tent where the ugliest creatures will be displayed. One of his most compelling acts is the hideous Sable-Girl, a half-sable, half-human creature who descends from a lineage of 17th-century Siberian trappers. Meanwhile, the narrative cuts to 1999 in Istanbul’s Hayalifener Apartments, where an enormous woman, writing in the first person, recounts her difficulties moving about in society while also living with a man utterly unsuited for her, a dwarf called B-C. Driven by the unwanted attention the couple attracts (they often appear in public incognito), B-C begins to write a Dictionary of Gazes that will demonstrate in entries seemingly unrelated to each other about how everything has to do with seeing and being seen. It will be “like a shaman’s cloak of forty patches and a single thread,” the dwarf notes, though his girlfriend is skeptical and increasingly anxious as the dictionary absorbs B-C’s attention and hinders him from actually seeing her. In the end, the fragments of this imaginative work, riveting in themselves, resist converging into a cohesive mosaic.
A strange, hallucinatory work.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-7145-3121-9
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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