After all these assertive maidens and housewives, Gail Godwin's The Odd Woman—her major work to date—is very different—just like Jane Clifford, a plain Jane, unfashionable, odd—both single and singular. She has none of the stylish assurance or self-sufficiency of all but one of the people she knows. She's even—God forbid—a romantic, looking for "her best life" while wondering whether one can even have a good one if unattached. With mostly literature to go by (she teaches the English novel in a midwestern college) she would like to find, as George Eliot did, that "Being happy in each other we find everything easy." Thus we come around to the point, or rather go back to it, questioning whether emancipation/enlightenment assures freedom, let alone peace of mind. During the few days here Jane's experiences seem to demand reassessment and a parti pris. She goes home to her grandmother's funeral and picks up pieces of the past: her grandmother, an elegant woman, was never more complete than after she was widowed; her mother has escaped a second impulsive marriage to a rigid, common man via God and the church. While Jane herself leaves for New York to meet Gabriel—her sometime lover, courtesy of the MLA, of two years ("fourteen furtive fucks" as her viciously amusing and defoliating femme-libbing friend Gerda says). Gabriel is not only married but reticent, pedantic and even frugal. There are marvelous scenes whether fantasized or actual and particularized: Jane in Saks trying to buy a dress and leaving it behind in a taxi; or going to see the lonely old man who might have been the ruin of a great-aunt—returned in a coffin. And in the end Jane goes back to school—the anachronism, the odd woman out. May she yet find that best life—perhaps there's no such thing. In lieu of it, settle for a fine book without any of that insular modish sophistication. Gail Godwin achieves a collaboration of the mind and the heart in a novel of experience which can enlarge our own via one of the most appealing young women of many seasons.
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1974
ISBN: 0345389913
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1974
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
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
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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