A deeply humane demonstration of wringing art from catastrophe.
A portrait of the small Polish town of Wlodawa during World War II, this collection of linked short stories is both moving and unsettling.
Shankman, the author of one previous novel (The Color of Light, 2013), brings Wlodawa to life through this set of stories told from different points of view. Like Joyce’s Dubliners, this book circles the same streets and encounters the same people as it depicts the horrors of Germany’s invasion of Poland through the microcosm of one village. The narration slips in and out of different characters’ minds, a reminder that there is no single story of the Holocaust—there are so many stories, so many points of view in just one little town. Shankman’s prose is inventive and taut; she writes of the “tea-with-milk color” of a boy’s skin and a young girl “watching the silvery bellies of enemy planes fly in tight formation overhead.” She also sneaks in a bit of magical realism in the forms of talking animals and mysterious, inexplicable natural disasters, suggesting the sheer kismet of surviving the war. Her writing is simple and matter-of-fact, never maudlin or sentimental. She describes the senseless humiliations and merciless killings of Wlodawa’s Jewish citizens bluntly, because that’s how they happened. Even so, the collection is bookended by stories told from the perspectives of Nazis; in both cases, the story’s protagonist is conflicted about his job. Shankman doesn’t let these figures off the hook for their deeds, however reluctantly performed, but her inclusion of these narrative voices alongside those of Jewish villagers displays both an aesthetic and a moral inquisitiveness. It also demonstrates how quickly and thoroughly war erases the will of the individual and how much easier it is to condemn a nation in abstract than any one person.
A deeply humane demonstration of wringing art from catastrophe.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1519-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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
A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman’s latest will resonate a long time.
In Beartown, where the people are as "tough as the forest, as hard as the ice," the star player on the beloved hockey team is accused of rape, and the town turns upon itself.
Swedish novelist Backman’s (A Man Called Ove, 2014, etc.) story quickly becomes a rich exploration of the culture of hockey, a sport whose acolytes see it as a violent liturgy on ice. Beartown explodes after rape charges are brought against the talented Kevin, son of privilege and influence, who's nearly untouchable because of his transcendent talent. The victim is Maya, the teenage daughter of the hockey club’s much-admired general manager, Peter, another Beartown golden boy, a hockey star who made it to the NHL. Peter was lured home to bring winning hockey back to Beartown. Now, after years of despair, the local club is on the cusp of a championship, but not without Kevin. Backman is a masterful writer, his characters familiar yet distinct, flawed yet heroic. Despite his love for hockey, where fights are part of the game, Peter hates violence. Kira, his wife, is an attorney with an aggressive, take-no-prisoners demeanor. Minor characters include Sune, "the man who has been coach of Beartown's A-team since Peter was a boy," whom the sponsors now want fired. There are scenes that bring tears, scenes of gut-wrenching despair, and moments of sly humor: the club president’s table manners are so crude "you can’t help wondering if he’s actually misunderstood the whole concept of eating." Like Friday Night Lights, this is about more than youth sports; it's part coming-of-age novel, part study of moral failure, and finally a chronicle of groupthink in which an unlikely hero steps forward to save more than one person from self-destruction.
A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman’s latest will resonate a long time.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6076-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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