Richly suggestive if somewhat inchoate work from a gifted, and underrated, writer.
These two short novels, intended as further volumes in the cycle that started with her highly praised Malina (1990), were actually begun in the 1960s and then left unfinished when Bachman, one of Austria’s most prominent postwar writers, died in 1973.
The more substantial Franza capsulizes the history of women’s oppression by men (an injustice that Bachmann had elsewhere explicitly equated with fascism) into the story of an abused wife whose escape from her brutal husband culminates in a transformative journey to the Egyptian desert. The more fragmentary Requiem allegorizes the same theme in the plight of a Jewish actress (the eponymous Fanny) victimized by the manipulative young playwright who, by writing a novel about her, effectively appropriates her life for his own purposes.
Richly suggestive if somewhat inchoate work from a gifted, and underrated, writer.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8101-1204-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Northwestern Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
Messy yet engrossingly feverish. Melchor has deep reserves of talent and nerve.
A dead Witch in a Mexican village prompts a host of locals to share rumors and memories of her checkered life and violent death.
Mexican writer Melchor’s first book published in English is remarkable for the sheer force of its language. Its eight chapters are each one paragraph long, and they're usually very long paragraphs, often constructed of page- or pages-long sentences. The format gives the impression that we’re occupying the space of a host of characters who’ll brook no interruption, even if their storytelling is lurid, digressive, and/or unreliable. But all agree that a bad thing has happened: The corpse of a local Witch who trades in “curses and cures” has been discovered floating in an irrigation canal, “seething under a myriad of black snakes.” The chapters that follow attempt to fill out the backstory: She allegedly killed her husband and cursed his sons, hexed relationships over money, might actually be a man, delivered abortions, and provided a druggy and boozy safe haven for young gay men. What’s true or not matters less than the Witch’s role as the village scapegoat, the person upon whom everyone places their shames and secrets. Two virtuoso chapters underscore the depth of feeling and disquieting intensity Melchor is capable of, one turning on a girl impregnated by her stepfather and the blame and embarrassment rained upon her, the other about a closeted young man in a Bosch-ian milieu that takes byways into drugs, violence, and bestiality porn. It’s tough stuff but not gratuitously so: The narrative moves so fast the slurs and gross-outs feel less like attempts to shock and more like the infrastructure of a place built on rage and transgression. The place is suffused with “bad vibes, jinxes...bleakness.” Whether the Witch was its creator or firewall is an open question.
Messy yet engrossingly feverish. Melchor has deep reserves of talent and nerve.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2803-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
By the author’s standards, this is taut, trim storytelling, though it characteristically makes all sorts of connections and...
The earmarks of the renowned novelist’s work are here—the impressive intellect, the patterns connecting music and science and so much else, the classical grounding of the narrative—but rarely have his novels been so tightly focused and emotionally compelling.
With his “genius” certified by a MacArthur grant, Powers (Generosity, 2009, etc.) has a tendency to intimidate some readers with novels overstuffed with ideas that tend to unfold like multilayered puzzles. His new one (and first for a new publisher) might be a good place for newcomers to begin while rewarding the allegiance of his faithful readership. His Orpheus of the updated Greek myth (which the novel only loosely follows) is a postmodern composer who lost his family to his musical quest; his teaching position to his age and the economy; and his early aspirations to study chemistry to the love of a musical woman who left him. At the start of the novel, he is pursuing his recent hobby in his home lab as “a do-it-yourself genetic engineer,” hoping for “only one thing before he dies: to break free of time and hear the future.” Otherwise, his motives remain a mystery to the reader and to the novel’s other characters, particularly after discovery of his DNA experiments (following the death of his faithful dog and musical companion, Fidelio) sends him on the lam as a suspected bioterrorist and turns his story viral. While rooted in Greek mythology, this is a very contemporary story of cybertechnology, fear run rampant, political repression of art and the essence of music (its progression, its timelessness). “How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul?” asks protagonist Peter Els, surely one of the most soulful characters that the novelist has ever conjured. Els looks back over his life for much of the narrative, showing how his values, priorities, quests and misjudgments have (inevitably?) put him into the predicament where he finds itself.
By the author’s standards, this is taut, trim storytelling, though it characteristically makes all sorts of connections and proceeds on a number of different levels.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-393-24082-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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