An original, painful tale of youthful isolation.
Conjoined twins in the Soviet Union face loneliness and alienation in Eliseev’s debut novel.
Faith and Hope were born anatomically attached at the hip—a sight so shocking that the midwife who delivered them fainted. Their mother was so horrified that she was persuaded by a nurse to sign their death certificate and give them away to scientists; the father—away on business—was informed of their passing by telegram. First, they were studied as scientific anomalies, but eventually they attended a special boarding school. Later, they moved to a foster home for disabled children, where they suffered grim indignities and grotesque mistreatment. When one sick child at the home dies of illness as a result of utter neglect, the attendants treat the rest of the kids like they’re prisoners doing penance. The pair become intoxicated with the possibility of a surgical separation, and they eventually escape in the hope of finding a doctor willing to perform the procedure—one that would likely kill one of them. On their own, they soon suffer extraordinary cruelty; at one point, a truck driver picks them up as hitchhikers and brutally rapes them. Homeless, penniless, and ostracized from society, they’re reduced to panhandling as they set out to find the mother they never knew. Hope becomes suicidal as the two yearn to lead a normal life, free of deprivation. Author Eliseev unflinchingly limns the psychological nuances of the twins’ predicament, showing that despite their intimate connection, each longs to be free: “I often wondered what it would be like—having your own body, going where you wanted, doing what you liked doing,” Faith thinks. “How does it feel not being the hostage of somebody else, even if it is your closest and dearest relative?” Eliseev’s prose is straightforward and appropriately childlike, and Faith’s wisdom and anguish are heart-rending. As she narrates the story in the first person, her emotional range swings from endearingly optimistic to despairing. The backdrop of the tale—set in the twilight years of the USSR—vividly depicts the social dysfunction of a so-called “normal” society of “one-headed” people.
An original, painful tale of youthful isolation.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-911414-23-0
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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