Gilchrist's fifth collection (Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle, 1989, etc.) is the familiar mix of dizzy lyricism, gossipy southernisms, and erotic longing that we've come to expect from her—though fans will be pleased with the continuing chronicle of the life of alter ego Rhoda Manning. ``An orgasm is an orgasm and it's a hell of a lot better than Xanax,'' Rhoda says in ``A Statue of Aphrodite,'' the book's opener about her visit with Dr. Brevard, an obstetrician who falls in love with his patient after reading one of her magazine articles; the search for orgasmic love is still Gilchrist's overriding theme, but her 50-ish heroine, introduced in In the Land of Dreamy Dreams (1981), is now more cautious and less frenetic. There is also an elegiac quality to the collection: ``Paris'' is a slice-of-life about Rhoda overseas, her knockabout credo undercut by the death of a young man in an explosion set by the Italian Mafia; ``Joyce'' is a tribute to a one-legged university teacher (Rhoda is one of his students), a teacher of Joyce too good for the mundane world who smokes himself to death; and ``Among the Mourners'' is about a poet suicide. On a lighter note, Gilchrist has a lot of fun at the expense of the health-care industry and its byzantine insurance scams as Rhoda writes letters to Blue Cross (``The Uninsured''); of the New Orleans poetry and jazz subculture (``The Raintree Street Bar and Washateria, A Fable''); and of her old standby Miss Crystal from Victory Over Japan (1984), now afflicted with allergies (``Too Much Rain, or, The Assault of the Mold Spores''). Some of these stories are as good as poetry slams, others spend too much time in the fields of dipsy-doodle ditziness. But even so, it's one of Gilchrist's best as her characters, deep into middle age, begin to take account of lasting things.
Pub Date: May 3, 1995
ISBN: 0-316-31442-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
IN THE NEWS
A peek behind the Bamboo Curtain, where Chinese poet Ha Jin, winner of the latest Flannery O'Connor Award, works out the conflicts between tradition and constraint that animate his second collection (after Ocean of Words, 1996). Ha Jin, who writes in English, is a Chinese veteran of the People's Liberation Army and, although he doesn't address political dissidence directly in his work, the 12 stories here all contain that undercurrent of cynicism in the face of authority that's common to military (as well as Communist) societies. Thus, the soldier of ``A Man-to-Be,'' who holds back from taking part in a gang-rape, not only finds himself defensive about his own manliness but is eventually shunned by his fiancÇe's family, who doubt his ability to father children, whereas the hooligan boys who terrorize their fellow classmates in ``Emperor'' discover that their popularity and status increase ever higher with each new atrocity they perpetrate. The abiding tensions of peasant life prove themselves again and again to be deeper than the Party's ideal of the New Communist Man, as in ``New Arrival'' (where a childless couple refuses to adopt a beloved young boy entrusted to their care because of their fear of bad luck) or ``Fortune'' (in which an old man's faith in fortune-telling remains so absolute that he becomes willfully deluded rather than admit that his life has been ruined). Honor remains a powerful primordial force as well, best illustrated in the predicament of the dutiful Party member who disobeys his dying mother's wish for a traditional funeral and is promptly denounced by his comrades for filial impiety; or in the public degradation of a prostitute (``In Broad Daylight''), which, however harrowing, remains a less vivid spectacle than the degradation of her accusers. Splendidly fluid and clear: Ha Jin has managed to make an utterly alien world seem as familiar as an old friend.
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-8203-1939-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
The tough-guy realism and casual nihilism of Thom Jones, Denis Johnson, and Larry Brown (among others) is finding its expression in a second generation of new writers who often sacrifice the subtleties of language for the perfection of the pose. Such is the case with first-timer Lattimore. A typical Lattimore character will wonder out loud if we start life doomed or work our way there. Such white-trash philosophes include the aging slacker of the title story, who tried work once, didn't like it, and now lives in an inherited house with a young boy abandoned by his father, who doesn't seem to be returning any time soon. The depths of meanness surface in ``Dogs,'' in which the narrator recalls locking a friend in a cage and peeing on him; long-simmering anger is the ``sport'' of ``Family Sport''; here, the narrator's mother is losing touch with reality, and her father is not taking the change well. Cruelty is at the black heart of ``My Best Day Was the Third Grade,'' a rich man's memory of his childhood nastiness. The expectant father of ``Answer Me This'' considers splitting, then ends up in a fight at a 711. The result of disappearing parents is seen in ``Jarheads,'' about the son of a battered many-times married mom who makes some unlikely friends; and in ``Separate States,'' about a confused girl who lives with her long-gone mother's ex-husband, an uncommonly good dad, it turns out. The long ``Between Angels'' strikes a surprisingly slapstick note—it's the comic tale of a gangster's quest for proof of the existence of God as revealed by the Ark of the Covenant, supposedly stored in an L.A. warehouse. More tales from loserville by a promising, if somewhat derivative, newcomer.
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-85407-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
