by Francois Van Wyk ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2013
Politically engaged characters experience life after apartheid in Van Wyk’s debut novel.
Van Wyk, who grew up in South Africa, firmly grasps the country’s history. The novel seems to waver between fiction and nonfiction and follows two families: One is black and one white, and they have worked side by side for generations on the farm Vergenoeg. Not far into the novel, 65-year-old Andries Mokwebo, a black farmhand, takes legal action against his white employer, Fanie Botha, for rights to the farm. The legal action comes at a time when the country is readily redistributing white-owned farmland to blacks. Andries wants the land so he can secure his teenage son Sephiwe’s financial future, yet he suspects that his actions are unfair to his employer, a good man. Sephiwe, one of the novel’s most believable characters, can understand the moral complexities with which his father and Fanie are grappling, but he’s more interested in his own intellectual curiosities (he muses, “the mystery surrounding the motion of the heavenly bodies serene in its being”) than in his father’s problems. The second narrative arc is about a love affair between a young black, female farmhand, Nandi, and her employer’s son, Koos. Both stories hold interest—at least at first—but the novel stagnates due to long and too frequent exchanges about politics, which are forced and inauthentic. From the relatively uneducated Andries, readers see dialogue like this: “For us all to survive in South Africa and for that matter in Africa, the problems we are faced with must become our collective national challenge. That is the only route for us to take, to save Africa, our fatherland.” Does anybody really talk like this to other family members around the dinner table? The story also often lacks spontaneity because Van Wyk tells too much and shows too little. A well-thought-out narrative made richer by Van Wyk’s opinions and knowledge and poorer by one-dimensional characters and a predictable plot.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-1483693361
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
33
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
Share your opinion of this book
More by Harper Lee
BOOK REVIEW
by Harper Lee
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.