Longer on wisdom than either surprise or delight, this will mainly interest readers who have been captivated by Keilson’s...
The first American publication of this 1947 novella accompanies the reissue of the German author’s The Death of the Adversary.
When the latter novel was translated for American publication in 1962, it received considerable acclaim for its illumination of emotional ambiguity during the rise to power of an unnamed Hitler. This shorter, slighter work by Keilson, a psychoanalyst who fled to the Netherlands in 1936 (and celebrated his 100th birthday last year), shares certain qualities with his masterwork, in its depiction of everyday detail and ritual against a backdrop—largely offstage—of unthinkable evil. Yet this is plainly minor work in comparison, not nearly as provocative nor as psychologically acute. A Dutch couple harbors a refugee for a year, keeping his existence as much of a secret as they can. Yet Nico, their secret upstairs housemate, may have some secrets of his own that he’s keeping from them. The dynamic among them shifts subtly over the year that he spends with them: “It stood like a wall between him and them, which slowly, slowly crumbled as the war dragged on and everything out of the ordinary and inhuman became typical and everyday.” One of the things that changes is the state of Nico’s health, which threatens to compromise the secret of his existence, and which ultimately results in a role reversal that represents whatever comedy there might be in this mirthless narrative. “He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within,” writes the author. “It was like a comedy where you expect the hero to emerge onstage, bringing resolution, from the right. And out he comes from the left...Later, though, the audience members go home surprised, delighted, and a little bit wiser for the experience.”
Longer on wisdom than either surprise or delight, this will mainly interest readers who have been captivated by Keilson’s better work.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-12675-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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