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THE SLEEPING WORLD

A muddled novel about political unrest with a narrator who slouches toward adulthood with her feet dragging behind.

A quartet of politicized Spanish students hits the road during the heady summer of 1977.

This emotional but uneven debut novel has an interesting narrative voice and very primal narrator, but its overuse of literary alchemy and melodrama threatens to derail its already meandering story. Our entry into the world of post-Franco Spain is Mosca, a smart but deeply cynical and somewhat self-loathing university student who's lost her brother, Alexis, who has presumably been murdered by the government for collaborating with militants. During a protest, Mosca and her friends turn violent, beating a police officer half to death. “We could have kept going, but we didn’t,” Mosca tells us. “A kind of pulse stopped us, a lack of inertia when our boots hit flesh that didn’t resist.” Fearing for their safety, Mosca, her frenemy La Canaria, her ex Grito, and Alexis’ friend Marco make a run for it. The novel is meant to capture the brazenness of youth and the dangers of an unsettled political scene, and to some degree, it does. But the characters come off as slovenly, poser punk-rockers prone to saying things like, “Only fascists don’t put out.” The novel also takes forever to get anywhere. Mosca and her friends travel first to Madrid, where they encounter a militant performance art group, and finally to Paris, where Alexis said he would go if he got away. There’s some drama along the way—they lose a friend, La Canaria turns up pregnant, and Marco is harboring a dark secret—but there’s little in the way of resolution, particularly in the novel’s hallucinatory third act. There’s some interest to be had from seeing a younger writer interpret a point in history, as with Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire (2015), but there are plenty of pitfalls to be surmounted as well.

A muddled novel about political unrest with a narrator who slouches toward adulthood with her feet dragging behind.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-501-13167-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016

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THE TESTAMENTS

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

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Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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THINGS FALL APART

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

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