It be rich bottom-folk dialogue amid the heavy weather. Readers will drag their hearts about like rocks.
Hill’s beclouded third is something of a variation on his A Life for a Life (1998), in which a Louisiana lad, convicted of killing a grocery-store clerk, is put away and, during his six years as a prisoner, is befriended and regularly visited by the dead clerk’s forgiving father.
This time, a father, Tyrone Stokes, a Louisiana drug addict who has gone cold turkey in jail, is released on parole after ten years, only to find when he arrives home in Brownsville that his 17-year-old son Marcus is on death row for murdering a white girl and has but a week to live before execution. Tyrone cannot yield that his son’s character allows for such an act, and he bends himself to saving his son’s life and getting an acquittal within the short time left. But Tyrone is up against a dozen stonewalls that author Hill has built, starting with Marcus’s own puffy-eyed defeatism when Tyrone visits him in the pen. Worse still is the gloom over the home Tyrone has returned to: Daddy dead of worry over Tyrone five years into Tyrone’s jailing; Mother who, in poor health, may die early of worry over both Tyrone and tangled-up Marcus; and Sister René, absolute hell to live with, her sharkteeth in Tyrone’s backside at every turn, blaming him for all the family’s woes, even for Marcus: “Like father, like son.” She wants him to leave. Tyrone’s parole officer as well is a Medusa, freezing Tyrone stone cold. Meanwhile, Marcus’s lawyer, who had the lad plead guilty, is little help until Tyrone finds witnesses who just might help free his gone-be-fried kid.
It be rich bottom-folk dialogue amid the heavy weather. Readers will drag their hearts about like rocks.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7582-0276-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dafina/Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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