Young lives of quiet desperation under dictator Ceauescu are the poignant focus of Kleist Prizewinner MÅller's third novel but her first to be translated into English. Systematic oppression snuffs first the spirit, then the existence, of those few young Romanians brave enough to dare to think independently. Sharing a college dorm room in the city with Lola and four other women, the narrator inhabits a Big Brotherlike world where loudspeakers blare proletarian music all day, where a longing for privacy is suspect, and personal belongings are regularly searched. Lola, a girl from the provinces, has adjusted to the awful poverty of student life. She joins the Communist Party to gain some small status. She exchanges sex for food to supplement her pinched diet. And she keeps a journal of surrealist observations to lift her spirits. But none of it helps: She eventually hangs herself. Shaken, the narrator befriends a trio of male students, Georg, Edgar, and Kurt, discovering in them a questioning, restless spirit much like her own. Together, they walk, talk, read forbidden books, and ultimately are brought in for police interrogation and intimidation. Graduation throws them back among the masses in the working world, but they stay in touch by letters and visits in spite of ongoing state harassment. When all but one of them lose their jobs, however, the pressure becomes unbearable: Georg, beaten by thugs and deeply depressed, is allowed to emigrate to Germany, where he jumps (or is pushed) to his death from a window in Frankfurt; Edgar, the narrator, and the narrator's mother are also permitted to depart, leaving Kurt, still employed, behind. He soon finds his own release, at the end of a rope. Not a pretty picture by any means, but, still, a powerful, affecting story—one that makes clear the real value of small triumphs and fleeting moments of happiness when they occur in the context of deprivation and incalculable loss.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-4295-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.
Originally published in Sweden, this charming debut novel by Backman should find a ready audience with English-language readers.
The book opens helpfully with the following characterizations about its protagonist: “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.” What the book takes its time revealing is that this dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold. Readers will see the basic setup coming a mile away, but Backman does a crafty job revealing the full vein of precious metal beneath Ove’s ribs, glint by glint. Ove’s history trickles out in alternating chapters—a bleak set of circumstances that smacks an honorable, hardworking boy around time and again, proving that, even by early adulthood, he comes by his grumpy nature honestly. It’s a woman who turns his life around the first time: sweet and lively Sonja, who becomes his wife and balances his pessimism with optimism and warmth. By 59, he's in a place of despair yet again, and it’s a woman who turns him around a second time: spirited, knowing Parvaneh, who moves with her husband and children into the terraced house next door and forces Ove to engage with the world. The back story chapters have a simple, fablelike quality, while the current-day chapters are episodic and, at times, hysterically funny. In both instances, the narration can veer toward the preachy or overly pat, but wry descriptions, excellent pacing and the juxtaposition of Ove’s attitude with his deeds add plenty of punch to balance out any pathos.
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3801-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Certain to create interest, comment, and consideration.
The Book-of-the-Month Club dual selection, with John Gunther's Behind the Curtain (1949), for July, this projects life under perfected state controls.
It presages with no uncertainty the horrors and sterility, the policing of every thought, action and word, the extinction of truth and history, the condensation of speech and writing, the utter subjection of every member of the Party. The story concerns itself with Winston, a worker in the Records Department, who is tormented by tenuous memories, who is unable to identify himself wholly with Big Brother and The Party. It follows his love for Julia, who also outwardly conforms, inwardly rebels, his hopefulness in joining the Brotherhood, a secret organization reported to be sabotaging The Party, his faith in O'Brien, as a fellow disbeliever, his trust in the proles (the cockney element not under the organization) as the basis for an overall uprising. But The Party is omniscient, and it is O'Brien who puts him through the torture to cleanse him of all traitorous opinions, a terrible, terrifying torture whose climax, keyed to Winston's most secret nightmare, forces him to betray even Julia. He emerges, broken, beaten, a drivelling member of The Party. Composed, logically derived, this grim forecasting blueprints the means and methods of mass control, the techniques of maintaining power, the fundamentals of political duplicity, and offers as arousing a picture as the author's previous Animal Farm.
Certain to create interest, comment, and consideration.Pub Date: June 13, 1949
ISBN: 0452284236
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1949
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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