An engaging tale, simply told and with a measure of wit: a high-end soap opera to be enjoyed and forgotten. Take it to the...
A second romantic potboiler from Marciano (Rules of the Wild, 1998), who returns to her native Italy to imagine what perils and joys could be experienced in three generations of a Mediterranean family.
Casa Rossa, as narrator Alina Strada tells us, was painted red by her grandfather Lorenzo in cold rage after his wife Renee abandoned him (and her daughter Alba) for another woman and went with her to live in Nazi Germany. Lorenzo, an artist, had painted a giant mural of Renee on one of the exterior walls and needed a dark color to obliterate it. The house remained in the Strada family for more than 70 years, but when it was sold, in the 1990s, Alina went to clean it for the new owners. Naturally, she came across a great many mementos that brought back the story of her brilliant and unhappy family. In the 1950s, her mother Alba, who grew up in Casa Rossa, married the famous screenwriter Oliviero Strada and enjoyed with him the dolce vita of Roman celebrity—until Oliviero was found dead, whether through suicide or murder. Very soon after, Alba married a shady businessman named Bruno, and Alina and her sister Isabella retreated from this unhappy new family into private worlds of their own: Alina to heroin, Isabella to the Red Brigades. When Alina eventually overcame her addiction, she moved to New York and fell in love with journalist Daniel Moore. By then, Isabella had been sent to prison, but Daniel publicized her case so widely that her verdict was overturned. Then it became apparent that Daniel’s interest in Isabella was more than professional. No such thing as a happy ending? Well, when was the last time you saw an Italian opera with one?
An engaging tale, simply told and with a measure of wit: a high-end soap opera to be enjoyed and forgotten. Take it to the beach.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-42123-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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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