The joyful sense of community within this love story offers a charming and refreshing escape from the modern world.
The sudden death of her parents in 1910 sends a teenager on a journey from heartbreak to self-discovery through the American Midwest.
Ruby Drake, named for the red birthmark on her chest, would be too sweet to be believed if not for her terrible secret—she’s in love with a married man. After being shuttled from her cold great-aunt’s home in Beardsley, Illinois, to the farm of a kindly German couple, the orphaned Ruby lands in Harvester, Minnesota, to work for Emma Schoonover, whose own children have died. There, farming becomes an “endless source of wonderment” for Ruby, and Sullivan’s (Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, 2015, etc.) rapturous depiction of farm life makes it ring true. Ruby’s parents, who appear in memories and the small mementos Ruby carries with her from house to house, seem to watch over her from above. When she meets Roland Allen, his beautiful wife, Dora, is suicidal after the death of their firstborn daughter. Emma encourages Ruby to help Dora run the farm even though she never approved of Dora as Roland’s wife. Somehow, the two young women strike up a friendship, leaving Ruby in the difficult position of following her heart or doing what’s right. Barrett Cromwell, a family friend, would be a more suitable husband for Ruby, but will she trade love for stability? Though her droll observations root her in her time and place—“Is anyone ever their own boss?”—Ruby manages to build a life for herself with and without Roland. Whether her ending is happy or sad is a question to sit with and think about.
The joyful sense of community within this love story offers a charming and refreshing escape from the modern world.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-57131-132-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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