Not a story that will move readers, though a cool fascination awaits them on every page. And then there are Nissenson’s...
After 16 years, Nissenson returns with a futuristic tale that lacks the charm of his extraordinary Tree of Life (1985) but still has the compelling interest typical in Nissenson.
American artist John Firth Baker is born in 2037, genetically engineered so that, as his art-historian mother fervently wishes, he’ll have “the lust of the eyes” and be brilliant in manual art (not mere “digital,” mind you). The engineering has been done by American scientist Frederick Rust Plowman at the Ozaki Metamorphic Institute of Kyoto: a place chosen in order to evade the strictures of the “Created Equal Act,” a US law passed in 2030 prohibiting “the artificial alteration of genetically determined traits in humins except for reasons of health.” With this wry twist on today’s reproductive preoccupations, Nissenson gets his story moving—in an America where “womin” and “humin” are spelled, well, that way; all but the poor live in “keeps” (whole towns sealed off from the insufferably hot, dust-driven weather); and global warming is turning the avenues of Manhattan into canals. The story of Baker’s short life is told through pieces of diary, excerpts from an interview in The International Review of Manual Art, and snippets of monologue from various people who knew him—including the sleazy guru Billy Lee Mookerjee, a leader in the Gaian religion whom the infatuated young Baker follows, serving Billy as a “sheila” and even growing breasts (as a “he-she”) to prove his fidelity to the earth-principle. But the religion stifles—even forbids—Baker’s work as an artist, and only after he wrenches himself away from Billy Lee does his career flourish and fame come quickly, though bringing a lamentable end to the young genius.
Not a story that will move readers, though a cool fascination awaits them on every page. And then there are Nissenson’s pictures, 34 line drawings scattered throughout, so brilliant that it seems the book were made to illustrate them, not vice-versa.Pub Date: May 11, 2001
ISBN: 1-56512-298-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
