Kitchen-sink realism among bottom-dogs in Louisiana gives the first half of Hill’s second novel (Satisfied with Nothin—, 1996) an absorbing artistry. Hill gets off to a seemingly amateurish start of high melodrama that swiftly morphs into a hook that locks your eyes to the page. Ten-year-old Little Man was inadvertently seduced into taking crack by the sister of drug dealer Kojak, who now has Little Man bound to a chair and will kill him unless Little Man’s brother, D—Ray Reid, 15, comes up with a hundred bucks to pay for Little Man’s crack. D—Ray steals his mother’s pistol, then a truck, and drives to a grocery store outside the black community, where he kills Stanley, the clerk. D—Ray feels the law closing in on him; he has a record, and his fingerprints are on the truck and in the grocery store. But before he goes into hiding, we—re treated to two choruses, one conducted in a barbershop as the customers await their haircuts (race relations are discussed at great length) and the other among three women in the Reid living room (where we learn that D—Ray’s father is in prison for life, having killed a white man). The lad-on-the-run theme speeds along nicely, neatly handled. When he’s captured and put on trial for killing Stanley, D—Ray comes up with some fanciful alibis but is nonetheless convicted of Murder One and put away. During his six years as a prisoner, D—Ray is visited regularly by Stanley’s father, Mr. Henry Earl, who wants D—Ray to reform and take his dead son’s place in the family. The sentimental ending aside, Hills’s swift simplicity in the telling and his rich black dialogue will carry you along.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-82278-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
© 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.
