Shukman takes narrative risks, but has yet to find his voice.
A young ex-soldier’s quest in Peru is stymied by a drug lord in this ambitious first novel from British author Shukman (stories: Mortimer of the Maghreb, 2006, etc.), now a resident of New Mexico.
When 19-year-old Jackson Small enlisted in the British army he was sent to Belize, where the somewhat older Connolly became his mentor, best friend and occasional lover. Connolly and Jackson searched for ruins in Guatemala, which Jackson sketched. In Peru the older man had glimpsed the lost city of La Joya, once home to the fair-skinned, pre-Inca Chachapoyans. Their friendship ended in a firefight with rebels; Connolly died, maybe from Jackson’s friendly fire. The young soldier had a breakdown and was discharged. Two years later he goes to Peru himself, to atone for Connolly’s death and find La Joya. Camping in the northern desert, he’s ripped off by an old Indian traveling with a small boy, Ignacio, who’s been kidnapped. Ignacio escapes and attaches himself to Jackson. The unlikely pair reach a coastal city where Jackson meets Sarah, a blonde American student, and contacts a British consular official, who pays him to do some undercover work in the mountains. There are now three elements to the story: Jackson’s self-discovery, his quest for the ruins and his secret mission, which will take him into territory controlled by drug kingpin Carreras. The self-discovery works fine; in Sarah’s arms, Jackson puzzles out his sexuality. There is excitement too as Jackson stumbles on the ruins and executes his mission, working with a Dutch drug runner who plays both sides. But Shukman has not integrated these different strands; he lets Jackson off the hook when he causes the death of his mountain guide. His flight from the bad guys through the cloud forest is overlong and monotonous, and his subsequent face-to-face with Carreras and the climax in Lima are not believable.
Shukman takes narrative risks, but has yet to find his voice.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26694-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
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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