Dunmore’s crystalline prose is almost too good; the pain she describes is often unbearable to read, yet the emotional power...
Orange Prize winner (A Spell of Winter, 2001) Dunmore, whose prolific output ranges from grim realism (The Siege, 2002) to spellbinding fantasy (The Greatcoat, 2012), offers the heartbreaking internal struggle of a young soldier adjusting to life at home after World War I.
Daniel has returned to the ingrown, rigidly class-conscious Cornwall community where he grew up. Since his mother died while he was overseas, he moves to the isolated farm of Mary Pascoe, an ailing old woman. By the time the novel opens, Mary has died of natural causes after telling Daniel he can have the farm. Following her wishes, he has buried her on her land. The problem is that he hasn’t reported her death to the authorities. And the longer he waits, the harder it is to tell anyone, even Felicia, the younger sister of his best friend, Frederick. Frederick and Daniel always considered themselves blood brothers despite their differences in class and intellect. Frederick grew up with Felicia in a big house full of books that Daniel devoured as a child even after dropping out of school at 11 to support his already ailing mother. Giving up the scholarship he deserved, Daniel worked as a gardener while Frederick, a terrible student who could barely read, went off to boarding school. But their friendship persisted. When war came, Frederick became an officer. Daniel, a gifted marksman, chose not to become a specialist and found unexpected camaraderie in the company of other enlisted men. Now, despite the moments of respite, even joy, that Daniel experiences with Felicia—who has suffered her own losses—Daniel is haunted by memories of Frederick and unwarranted guilt. From the first page, Dunmore shares Daniel’s inner life, building an increasing sense of dread while exposing the tragedy of great promise thwarted by forces beyond Daniel’s control.
Dunmore’s crystalline prose is almost too good; the pain she describes is often unbearable to read, yet the emotional power resonates, and Daniel is impossible to forget.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2254-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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
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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