A first English translation of short fiction by the great Estonian author (The Czar's Madman, 1993; Professor Martens' Departure, 1994), who begins to look more and more like a prime Nobel Prize contender. These six long pieces, all written between 1979 and 1986, record the ordeals of Kross's countrymen from the onset of WW II through its immediate aftermath, first under German, then Soviet occupation. The stories are about the dynamics of political commitment and the mechanics of personal survival, as explored by their common protagonist Peeter Mirk (manifestly his creator's alter ego), a sophisticated young law student and leftist intellectual who has—in his own words—``tried his hand at various things: writing poetry, bragging, searching for the truth, conspiracy, and . . . lecturing.'' Complex and densely woven, these are tales that take in a broad range of experiences, relationships, and exchanges of opinions; people's whole lives are skillfully telescoped and analyzed in relation to the specific actions in which they're involved. ``The Wound'' and ``Lead Piping'' describe variously abortive efforts to leave Russia-dominated Estonia and emigrate to Germany (at Hitler's invitation), vividly denoting their characters' complicated political allegiances. ``The Stahl Grammar'' and the troubling title story, both set in prisons, unforgettably show how the power politics of such sealed microcosms exactly mirror the larger conflicts of the world outside. ``The Conspiracy'' in particular reveals the ease with which people who think they're neutral slip into accommodation with injustice and evil. And the wonderful tale ``The Day His Eyes Are Opened'' confronts Mirk with the chastening spectacle of a survivor of the forced-labor camps whose political courage shows up the shallowness of Mirk's own ``suffering.'' An informative introduction by Kross's (exemplary) translator offers a solidly detailed context for this invaluable opportunity to sample further the works of one of Europe's greatest living writers.
Pub Date: July 18, 1996
ISBN: 1-86046-005-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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