A celebration of the lonely little guy who fights back, but too schematic to convince or engage.
Sailor/novelist Michelsen (To Sleep With Ghosts, 1992, etc.) sets his latest on Cape Cod, where the environmental toll of urban sprawl—plus the anguish of fishermen trying to compete with big boats—is more affecting than the plight of his overdrawn and overloaded protagonist.
Michelsen adds heft to the story of Ollie Cahoon, the seemingly doomed fisherman, by interrupting the narrative with short chapters from a fictional book about the ecology of Cape Cod. The information there—facts about population growth, geology, the water supply—validate Cahoon’s responses to developers, who want his inheritance, and to the local fishing authorities and factory ships, who are making it impossible for him to earn a living from the sea. Cahoon’s life is a mess: his marriage is on the rocks, his wife tired of the uncertainties and dangers of fishing; he’s been in jail for armed robbery; and he’s frequently in trouble for drinking and brawling. Cahoon’s a victim, if somewhat headstrong and stupid, but his heart is basically in the right place: he cares about the sea, overfishing, and preserving the land. The tale opens as Cahoon, confined to a wheelchair, is about to go on trial for shooting local developer Thatch Hallett. In flashbacks, Cahoon recalls how his life fell apart as he tried to keep on fishing, his mate Pig left for easier work, and Billy, his inexperienced brother-in-law, made a costly mistake and was badly injured in a storm at sea. Cahoon’s family, which includes a kayak-rowing mother, a gay great-uncle, and a sister with a baby and no husband, sympathized, but couldn’t help. So when it all got to be too much, Cahoon reluctantly agreed to sell the water rights to the land on which Hallett was building a shopping mall. A visit to the site of what was once pristine marsh is wrenching, though, and he decides to take action.
A celebration of the lonely little guy who fights back, but too schematic to convince or engage.Pub Date: June 29, 2001
ISBN: 1-58465-081-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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