A collection of delightful and still relevant stories that certainly earns its resurrection.
Nine fantastical, oddly endearing short stories rescued from the ravages of time.
The late Fast (Greenwich, 2000, etc.) was a writer with a lot of roles, among them an activist against the Red Scare of the 1950s, which landed him a three-month prison sentence. He’s probably best known for writing the novel Spartacus (1951), which Stanley Kubrick famously adapted into the classic film. But he was also one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century, having written nearly 100 books, including both fiction and nonfiction as well as plays, poetry, and hundreds of short stories. Here, a collection of nine stories sharing fabulist tendencies, originally published in 1970, has been reissued, and it's well worth revisiting. The title story has the absurd humor of Catch-22, as a profane general brings down a real-life angel out of the skies over Vietnam. In “The Mouse,” the title character argues philosophy with a pair of visiting astronauts. “The Vision of Milty Boil” is a Kafkaesque satire on society; a small man brings the world down to his size through extraordinary effort and questionable justification. “The Mohawk” is very much an artifact of its time yet also timeless: A man named Clyde Lightfeather decides to meditate on the front steps of New York’s famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The prescient story “The Wound” seems familiar these days, as an absurdly dumb businessman proposes detonating atomic bombs underground to profit from mining oil shale. “Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal” is a literal devil’s bargain written with the wit and style of O. Henry. “The Interval” is a first-person reflection on age and time by a grieving widower. “The Movie House” is something of a Schrödinger’s cat quandary involving a locked door inside a theater and the projectionist who insists it can’t be opened. Finally, in “The Insects,” Fast ends with the apocalypse, initiated not by the dreaded Communists but by nature itself.
A collection of delightful and still relevant stories that certainly earns its resurrection.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-290844-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.
An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).
Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
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
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