Any war deserves a better novel than this one.
The war in Iraq tears an American family apart, in a novel that suffers from cultural stereotypes, political polemics and a strange depiction of the afterlife.
Todd Ogden is a painter of some repute and insufferable self-absorption. He came of age during the free-loving ’60s and seduced his wife, Sarah, on their first meeting. She is a member of an established, wealthy New England family, the kind that donates heavily to private schools and has buildings named after them, and her marriage to Todd was seen as a sign of radical rebellion. Sarah and Todd have encouraged their two offspring, Amanda and Jack, to be equally free-spirited, but Jack attempts to exercise his independence by enlisting in the Marines instead of accepting early admission to Harvard. Todd responds in a manner that is exaggeratedly boorish, all but disowning his son, while displaying a class-conscious snobbishness that extends to Jack’s new girlfriend. Jessica’s innate goodness matches her beauty, but she hasn’t lived the life of privilege that Jack now appears willing to throw away. As shuffled by Schaeffer (Zermatt, 2003, etc.), the voices of these five principal characters alternate in narrating chapters, with Jack proceeding through every boot-camp cliché without ever discovering much beyond affirmation for the selfless saintliness of his decision. Tragedy ensues, as do complications, leaving all of the survivors to come to terms with the unfathomable as best they can. Conveniently, Amanda works as an assistant on the letters-to-the-editor page of the New York Times, where most of her coworkers feel as little regard for the Marines as her father does. While bullheaded Todd belatedly tries to make amends and save his floundering marriage, Schaeffer injects the voice of a wisecracking God into the narrative, in a manner that religious liberals and conservatives might find equally offensive.
Any war deserves a better novel than this one.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-7867-1716-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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