A lightly spun story that, while never preachy or didactic, is full of timely lessons for those pondering the rise of...
An Italian immigrant to Australia becomes more native than the natives, to unhappy ends.
When we meet him at the outset of Sydney-based novelist and teacher Castagna’s slender but rich story, Antonio Martone is “not yet the Antonio Martone who becomes so famous for a brief moment in history,” a spasm of protectivist protest against those who are arriving after him, in this case from a Norwegian container ship that is carrying a load of 438 refugees. Antonio has been struggling all his life to make a home far from poor, landslide-prone Calabria, so much so that when his daughter, Clare, shows him a class project, a collage of Italy, he protests, “We’re Australian. I’m Australian." So effective is his identification with his new country that no one really blinks when, grieving at the death of a friend and fellow immigrant, he begins to pass his hours with the nationalists and skinheads in the neighborhood. His wife and children are puzzled but busy with lives of their own and certainly unable to predict the course that Antonio’s version of Australianness will take. Meanwhile, Clare, dissatisfied with her job as a bookstore clerk but not sure what else awaits her, passes her time with a former student, a Vietnamese immigrant, who, pondering the fates of the 438 newcomers, says, “You know my community, we were refugees too. But, you know, not like them, as my mother would say.” Quietly, and without ever making much of a fuss in this understated character study, Castagna seems to suggest that nationalism is a kind of madness that implicates everyone it touches, and never for the better.
A lightly spun story that, while never preachy or didactic, is full of timely lessons for those pondering the rise of me-first nationalism throughout the world.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60945-509-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing...
Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past.
Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the “sociopath” Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef. And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from a Taliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending.
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 1-57322-245-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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