Schmaltzy, workmanlike epic of Israel's formative years: Wouk's tenth novel. In light of the recent historical accord between the PLO and Israel, this latest from the author of The Caine Mutiny (1951), etc., could hardly be more timely—a replication of Israel's struggle for nationhood, then for identity. The story begins in 1948 with the new nation's fate hanging in the balance. Jerusalem is surrounded; Arab armies are scything through the Holy Land. The Arabs' only problem is that they don't have a common strategy other than eradicating Jews. The Israelis aren't getting along so well either, factional as they also are—but they have at least concurred upon one leader, David Ben-Gurion, who has appointed one general, American Mickey Marcus. Fighting alongside these and other real-life Israeli luminaries is a cast of fictional men and women led by Zev Barak (Marcus's aide), Yael Luria (a beautiful army sergeant), and Don Kishote (a young soldier who has already seen too much of life's ills in Europe). Through the fight for independence, the Suez crisis, and the Six-Day war, these characters mature, witnessing history (the battle for Latrun, Mitla Pass, the armored dash to El Arish), and meeting historical figures running the gamut from Idi Amin to JFK. Don Kishote survives to become Israel's chief of staff; Zev becomes a diplomat; and Yael- -well, after losing in love she goes off to America to make her fortune but returns in time to celebrate Israel's victory over the Egyptians. Of most interest are the history lesson and Wouk's insight into the political doings. Pedestrian storytelling, though, and flat character undermined by too much talk and too little action count heavily at the bottom line.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0316954411
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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