Nell’s life experiences read like her book collection—some are part of a series, some stand alone, and all are ultimately...
More than 40 years of history bookend a lifelong love affair with reading for the resilient heroine of Sullivan’s latest novel set in Harvester, Minnesota.
Nell Stillman gets the shock of her life when her husband, Herbert, dies at the age of 35, leaving Nell penniless. Sullivan (What a Woman Must Do, 2000, etc.) tempers the harsh realities of widowhood at the turn of the 20th century with the kindness of Nell’s small-town neighbors. The wealthy Lundeen family offers Nell a job as a public school teacher, while Nell’s younger cousin, Elvira, moves in to help her care for her infant son. The rest of the book covers Nell’s life from that point until her death many years later, which is foretold in an obituary in the first chapter. Nell’s friends and family members precede her in death as they would in real life—some get sick, some go off to war, and others drop dead without any foreshadowing. In the works of British novelist P.G. Wodehouse, however, Nell discovers a “world that provided all that the so-called real world withheld—most especially, friends who didn’t leave.” With all the buildup, a more detailed discussion of Wodehouse's novels would have been appreciated. But Nell's enthusiasm for his books evokes a simpler time when reading and friendship could ward off despair. Nell manages to find hope—even love—in every stage of her life, the most satisfying of which is her interaction with her favorite author.
Nell’s life experiences read like her book collection—some are part of a series, some stand alone, and all are ultimately comforting and timeless.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-57131-111-5
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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