Despite a sugary, overly tidy ending, this is unusual, well-crafted storytelling enhanced by some telling emotional notes.
A handful of strangers in London find themselves connected, and changed, by dark events—sudden death, sexual assault—and the humbling of a self-made man.
Four characters narrate the new novel from British journalist-turned-author Day (Home Fires, 2013): rag-trade tycoon Sir Howard Pink; ambitious journalist Esme Reade; haunted Ugandan immigrant Beatrice Kizza; and a widow, Carol Hetherington, whose role in the story moves from peripheral to central. Pink (originally named Fink, the son of Jewish immigrants), with his passing resemblance to a real-life British businessman, starts the ball rolling via an action that brings to mind another figure from news headlines when he forces himself sexually on a black chambermaid in an upscale English hotel. The chambermaid is Beatrice, and there will be repercussions. Pink is no stranger to the media. His rags-to-riches background and high-profile, luxurious lifestyle make good copy. But he’s also known for the family tragedy that befell him 11 years earlier: the disappearance of his lovely but troubled 19-year-old daughter, Ada. Day’s journalistic experience clearly infuses her novel, not just in her borrowing of front-page events and characters or in the plausible background to Esme’s work environment, but also in the briskly efficient narration. Her characters have fully documented psychologies, rounded out with precise detail, and her plot, although it invokes big issues—race, class, sexism—delivers shrewd, well-paced storytelling. Most memorable is the trajectory of Sir Howard, the bullying outsider whose descent into self-disgust and the abject depths of sorrow is achieved with surprising impact. In his orbit, Esme’s career blossoms and Beatrice’s life swerves away from isolation and nightmare, while the once-fearless entrepreneur himself emerges from suffering and self-scrutiny a better man.
Despite a sugary, overly tidy ending, this is unusual, well-crafted storytelling enhanced by some telling emotional notes.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62040-836-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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