Well-paced and filled with likable, plausibly flawed characters.
Happily ensconced in Boston with her fiance, Jonah, Callie’s only real trouble is her hesitancy about marrying him. That is, until her cousin Aliki phones from Greece to tell her that her beloved Uncle Nestor has died, and the funeral is in two days. So why didn’t her mother tell her sooner?
Power’s debut novel traces Callie’s trip to Greece, where she must not only sort through her uncle’s effects, but also unravel the mystery of her mother’s past. Like her mother, Clio, Callie is named for a muse, and her full name is Calliope Notaris Brown. In shortening her name, she has rejected her Greek heritage. Yet, her mother has rejected her American heritage for her; in fact, for the first weeks of her life in America, Clio papered over the windows of her marital home. Perhaps discovering why her mother kept the news of Nestor’s death from her may, in turn, explain why her mother always hated living in America, why her family lost its livelihood during World War II and why her aunts hold her mother responsible for that loss. Callie arrives in Patras, Greece, just in time for carnival, whose ecstatic abandon leads Callie into toying with a liaison of her own, as she uncovers her mother’s and uncle’s secrets. During the confusing time of the Italian and then German occupation of Greece, every possession could be confiscated, every plan could lead to betrayal, and every love could lead to disaster. Power’s tale fluidly shifts among Callie’s investigation into her family’s past, her search for her own place—is it with Jonah?—and Clio’s wartime experiences. Memories inhabit the present, easily holding a mirror between Callie’s and Clio’s choices in different times, different circumstances.
Well-paced and filled with likable, plausibly flawed characters.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-53068-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
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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