A masterpiece that well merits this fresh, engaging translation, which marks its author’s 700th birthday.
A much-translated tale of plagues, priestly malfeasance, courtly love and the Seven Deadly Sins finds a satisfying new version in English.
The Decameron, as its Greek-derived name suggests, is a cycle of stories told over a period of 10 days by Florentines fleeing their city for the countryside in order to escape the devastating Black Death of 1348. Perched at the very point of transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the author of those stories, Giovanni Boccaccio, was a narrative innovator: As translator Rebhorn notes in his long, circumstantial introduction, medieval readers were fond of grab bags of stories, but “there is no precedent in Italian literature for Boccaccio’s use of a frame narrative to unify his collection.” Boccaccio borrowed liberally from previously published anthologies, but as Rebhorn also shows, he added plenty of new twists and arranged his material to form a thematic arc: Day 1, for instance, centers on characters who got out of trouble thanks to their native wit, while Day 4 centers on the character flaws that keep people from getting what they want. What so many of his characters want, it happens, are things frowned upon in polite society, as his ribald tale of the poor cuckolded owner of a conveniently large barrel so richly shows. Rebhorn’s translation of Boccaccio’s sprawling narrative, accompanied by informative endnotes, is sometimes marked by odd shifts in levels of diction, often within the same sentence (“That’s when I felt the guy was going too far...and it seemed to me that I should tell you about it so that you could see how he rewards you for that unwavering fidelity of yours”); it is otherwise clear and idiomatic, however, and Rebhorn capably represents Boccaccio’s humor and sharp intelligence.
A masterpiece that well merits this fresh, engaging translation, which marks its author’s 700th birthday.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-06930-3
Page Count: 1264
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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