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RED CAVALRY

Name: RED CAVALRY
Author: Isaac Babel
ISBN: 978-1-78227-093-5

by Isaac Babel ; translated by Boris Dralyuk ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2015

Short but emotionally deep studies of life during wartime.

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A classic series of wartime sketches in a translation that emphasizes their lyricism and dark comedy.

Babel (1894-1940) first published this collection in 1926, after serving as a journalist in the Russian army during the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. It is an unvarnished vision of the ugliness of war, and his anti-propagandistic candor as a writer would ultimately lead to his death in Stalin’s purges. If literary immortality is small consolation, there’s no denying these stories’ enduring power. The first story, “Crossing the Zbrucz,” features its soldier narrator looking for a moment’s rest in a house before realizing the man sleeping beside him is dead, “[h]is gullet…ripped out, his face…hacked in two.” “Salt,” one of the collection’s most emotionally brutalizing tales, is styled as a letter to the editor from a Cossack soldier, boastfully recalling how he cruelly dealt with a woman who pleaded for safety on their train by pretending the bag of salt in her arms was a baby; in little more than five pages Babel manages nuanced symbolism, a voice of callous inhumanity, and a grotesque vision of herd mentality. Translator Dralyuk writes in the foreword about his interest in emphasizing Babel’s poetic style, which emerges clearly in “My First Goose,” about a soldier effortfully trying to put Lenin’s words into a shallow act of violence, observing how “my heart, crimson with murder, creaked and bled.” Though the stories are brief and deliver a clear message about the frustrations of battle, Babel’s rhetoric is never plainly parable- or fablelike; he uses a blunt realism to sketch out scenes that can have a variety of resonances. Writing about war has changed with the times, but war hasn’t, and these stories from nearly a century ago remain grimly current.

Short but emotionally deep studies of life during wartime.

Pub Date: May 12, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-78227-093-5

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ESSENTIAL FICTIONS
by Isaac Babel ; translated by Val Vinokur ; edited by Val Vinokur

- BOOK REVIEW
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ISAAC BABEL
by Isaac Babel & edited by Nathalie Babel & translated by Peter Constantine

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.