A first-novelist’s in-depth look at a black family’s move into a white world. Mabel, who ranks low on the self-esteem scale, thanks, in part, to a supercritical father, has continually underestimated herself. It’s no surprise, then, that she’s thrilled when “high yellow” newcomer Tom Spader shows up in her hometown of Lovejoy, Illinois, and proposes marriage soon after. Tom has nothing but a burning ambition to succeed in a white man’s world, and, sure enough, by the time the couple has three young children—Hilary, Stormy and Tommy—he’s a successful attorney at an otherwise all-white law firm, with dreams for even bigger and better things. When a controversial case involving a black man accused of arson turns the Spaders— minority friends and neighbors against them, it nevertheless earns Tom a promotion, and he decides, without consulting his wife, to move the whole family to lily-white, snobby Greenwich, Connecticut. On Mabel’s first day in Greenwich, a neighbor mistakes her for a maid, and from there on, Åber-suburban life goes from bad to worse. Mabel likes her own new maid, Sylvia, but Tom would be furious if she were ever to socialize with Sylvia and her friends or even attend a service with them at the nearest black church. The PTA agrees to meet at Mabel’s house, and although the women seem pleasant at first (Tom has instructed Mabel on what foods to serve and how to hold her teacup), they quickly show their true colors. As for the kids, the Greenwich schoolchildren aren’t any more open-minded than their parents; racial slurs, offensive jokes and other forms of cruelty are the norm. Eventually, Tom earns a judgeship, but Mabel remains ambivalent about his success. By the disturbing finish, the man’s real nature is revealed—and Mabel has to come to terms with her privileged children and precarious perch on the border of two very different worlds. Ellis has an appealing style and doesn—t resort to easy answers or platitudes—a combination that makes for a promising debut.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-44876-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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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