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MAHJAR

Name: MAHJAR
Author: Eva Sallis
ISBN: 1-74114-071-4

by Eva Sallis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2005

Altogether, an unusual and never uninteresting literary niche.

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Fifteen elegant tales about the Arab émigré experience in Australia, courtesy of the Down Under continent’s Sallis (The City of Sealions, p. 145).

While the collection tracks an Australian’s immersion in Arab Yemeni culture, the pieces mostly concern the Lebanese community’s often-uneasy fit within Australian society. In three parts, corresponding to groupings of families, Sallis explores the ancient ties to family and culture that unite and haunt these émigrés. In the first story, an allegory for the startling collision between Australian and Arab cultures, a gigantic kangaroo attacks the car of a family on excursion in the Riverland country. Enraged as her husband Amin is battered by the beast, the wife, Zein, gets out and pommels the animal to death with her patent-leather stilettos while shouting, “God is great!” Eventually, and often unfortunately for the preservation of the family as a tightly knit unit, the émigrés begin to adapt to Australian society, as in “Ibtisam Had Four Sons,” about a matriarch, Ibtisam, who can’t quite keep track of all the goings-on of her wildly assimilated children—all they do is deposit news of divorces and ill-begotten pregnancies. In “Music,” the groom’s mother, Zein, rues the marriage of her son to a plain Australian girl whose family eyes the Arabs suspiciously, and yet she finds a redemptive moment watching the “secret, strengthening gift” of love pass between the newlyweds. Several pieces treat a rich local folklore, like “The Jackal,” a chilling dramatization of the saying that a jackal can drag and bury the body of a man. By the third part, Sallis begins introducing political overtones in stories dealing with Iraqis fleeing from American bombings, and Arab stone-throwers being hunted down savagely in Palestine. These latter tales are heavily weighted, though harrowing, and lack the intricate delineation of the earlier ones.

Altogether, an unusual and never uninteresting literary niche.

Pub Date: April 28, 2005

ISBN: 1-74114-071-4

Page Count: 180

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE FIRE
by Eva Sallis

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CITY OF SEALIONS
by Eva Sallis

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
HOLLY
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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THE JOY LUCK CLUB

by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 22, 1989

With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one...

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An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women—who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco—and their very American 30-ish daughters.

Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters "as from another shore," and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths—the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times—will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to "give [my daughter] my spirit." The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their "good stories," tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and "feasted" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, "wait for death or choose our own happiness?" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is "strong. . .like the wind"; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters—in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused ("You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions—like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: "Strongest wind cannot be seen." Other daughters—in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles—tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: "How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"

With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans.