The late Nobelist's third posthumously published novel (after Scum and The Certificate) was serialized (1981-83) in Yiddish in the Forward newspaper and was titled Lost Souls. But "meshuga" (crazy) is the world where lies were bits of truth, where "no sooner did one free oneself of a neurosis, then another rushed in to take its place," and where God — the novelist? — maybe has a meaning in the works. Singer's following will feel at home: those uptown Broadway cafeterias of the 50's, a sub-shtetl of recent immigrants, nursing coffee and gossip, Manhattan in freezing cold or blazing heat, milling pigeons, the eerie vacancy of skyscrapers. And throughout there is the crazy choreography of uprooted random survivors of the Holocaust, drifting, as here, into odd combinations; and always wry cosmic questions nag: "What does God want? There has to be something He wants." Narrator Aaron Greidinger, writer and radio "advisor" to a Yiddish-speaking following, is stunned to see in large person Max, once patron of the arts in Warsaw, in roaring top form as "the well-known glutton, guzzler, womanizer." Max sweeps Aaron off to meet his 27-year-old lover, Miriam, another camp survivor. The trio achieves a psychic/sexual entity: Max, the elderly "husband, father, lover," considers lovers Aaron and Miriam his children. Aaron, bemused, somewhat horrified, sees "entanglements without exit": Stanley, Miriam's flabby husband, barges in, points a gun (there is a question about God); lovers old and new send signals; Miriam's wartime sex is more serious — and there's worse to come. At the last, after a trip to Israel, and a terrible discovery, Aaron weighs love and obligation in the shadow of a world's "slaughterhouse." Solid representative Singer with speculations light and dark, comic and searing. Manna for his following, who know that wherever Singer touched pen to paper there sprang up a village — of ghosts, of survivors, of all of us.
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-20847-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
McEwan is a gifted storyteller, but this one is as frustrating as it is intriguing.
The British author’s latest novel concerns a triangle formed by two humans and one android in an alternate version of England.
The year is 1982, the British are about to lose the Falklands War, and Alan Turing is not only still alive, but his work has helped give rise to a line of androids almost indistinguishable from humans. The narrator, Charlie Friend, an aimless 32-year-old, inherits enough money to buy one of the pricey robots. He and Miranda, the younger woman living above him, each supply half the “personality parameters” required to push Adam past his factory presets. Before long, as things between the humans seem to be getting serious, Charlie finds himself the first man “to be cuckolded by an artefact.” They all survive the fling, although Charlie imagines he detects “the scent of warm electronics on her sheets,” and Adam turns lovesick, composing 2,000 haiku for Miranda (namesake of the Bard’s character who famously utters: “O brave new world, / That has such people in’t”). Early on, the android has told Charlie that Miranda is a liar and might harm him without providing details. These statements flag a fateful backstory comprising a teenage Miranda, two schoolmates, and a death threat. Along the way to a busy and disturbing ending, Charlie makes a connection with Turing that allows for some nerd-pleasing kibble like “non-deterministic polynomial time.” McEwan (Nutshell, 2016, etc.) brings humor and considerable ethical rumination to a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence. But his human characters seem unfinished, his plot a bit ragged. And why the alternate 1982 England, other than to fire a few political shots about the Falklands, Thatcher, and Tony Benn? Does the title make sense as either clause or complete sentence? Are we meant to imagine the “real” author as a present-day Adam?
McEwan is a gifted storyteller, but this one is as frustrating as it is intriguing.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54511-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
A lyrical, urgent artistic response to a history that is still unfolding.
Searching novel of the Berlin refugee crisis by Erpenbeck, considered one of the foremost contemporary German writers.
“The best cure for love—as Ovid knew centuries ago—is work.” So thinks Richard, who, recently retired from a career as a classics professor, has little to do except ponder death and his own demise that will someday come. What, he wonders, will become of all his things, his carefully assembled library, his research notes and bric-a-brac? It’s definitely a First World problem, because, as Richard soon discovers, there’s a side of Berlin he hasn’t seen: the demimonde of refugees in a time when many are being denied asylum and being deported to their countries of origin. His interest awakens when he learns of a hunger strike being undertaken by 10 men who “want to support themselves by working” and become productive citizens of Germany. For Richard, the crisis prompts reflection on his nation’s past—and not just Germany, but the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, of which he had been a citizen (as had Erpenbeck). Richard plunges into the work of making a case for the men’s asylum, work that takes him into the twists and turns of humanitarian and political bureaucracy and forces him to reckon with a decidedly dark strain running through his compatriots (“Round up the boys and girls and send them back to where they came from, the voice of the people declares in the Internet forums”). Richard’s quest for meaning finds welcoming guides among young men moving forth from Syria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, some unable to read, one confessing that he has never sat in a cafe before, all needful strangers with names like Apollo, Rashid, and Osarobo. In the end, he learns from his experiences, and theirs, a lesson that has been building all his life: “that the things I can endure are only just the surface of what I can’t possibly endure.”
A lyrical, urgent artistic response to a history that is still unfolding.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2594-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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