A bulky, at times forbiddingly dour ground-level journey into Soviet-era deceits.
An epic study of one Bulgarian village’s travails during World War II and under Communist rule.
First published in 1986, Petrov’s novel circles around a group of men who, on Christmas Eve 1965, leave a bar to participate in a wolf hunt in a blizzard. The men have known each other for years and generally have reasons to resent each other, so the mix of bad weather, alcohol, and rifles is an ominous combination. But though the excursion has explosive and tragic consequences, Petrov works at a low boil, moving slowly (sometimes very slowly) through the men’s pasts. One has his wedding day ruined when one of the attendees publicly reveals that the bride is not a virgin; others are farmers strong-armed into taking part in a Soviet cooperative that mainly impoverishes them; a tubercular young man struggles to defend the honor of his brother-in-law and father-in-law, who both stand accused of treason. Translator Rodel keeps the prose clear and colloquial, but the avalanche of details about various families and their histories, delivered in lengthy paragraphs, is often dry. However, a central section centered on Ivan, the village artist and troublemaker, has a welcome liveliness: his interference in the marriage of a local couple blends the romance and danger of a love triangle with the political and financial struggles of getting ahead under communism. (The implication being that life under the co-op's strictures is a kind of cuckolding too.) Like most critiques of communism, the mood throughout the novel is melancholy, and the plot is rife with loss and heartbreak. “Everywhere there were wars, poverty and misery, treachery and lies, violence and slavery, joy and happiness,” one narrator intones near the end, which also captures the ratio of gloom to sunshine contained within.
A bulky, at times forbiddingly dour ground-level journey into Soviet-era deceits.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-914671-70-1
Page Count: 584
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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