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DAUGHTER OF MY PEOPLE

Name: DAUGHTER OF MY PEOPLE
Author: James Kilgo
ISBN: 0-8203-2002-1

by James Kilgo ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 1998

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A debut novel of considerable emotional force, by an accomplished essayist (Deep Enough for Ivorybills, 1988). Kilgo sets his novel in rural South Carolina, in 1918, ringing some audacious changes on a subject that might seem to hold few new dramatic possibilities: the love of two contentious brothers for the same woman. In this case, some of the tension in the telling comes from the fact that the woman, Jennie, is a mulatto and, since the brothers are white, is thus forbidden to them. They can sleep with her (Hart has been carrying on an affair with her for many years, while Tison, older and wealthier, watches in growing frustration), but they cannot, given their own upbringing or the society (still violently racist) in which they live, treat their interest as more than physical indulgence. One of the strength’s of Kilgo’s narrative is his portrait of Jennie. Troubled, complex, resilient, she is far more than an uncomplaining figure upon whom the two can project their fantasies. Another distinctive element here is Kilgo’s perceptive and convincing grasp of the awful complexities of race in the South in the recent past. Jennie has not only grown up around the brothers, but she is distantly related to them, the unacknowledged result of an affair between her mother and one of the brother’s in-laws. The author’s nonfiction work has largely been about the interactions of men and nature in the South, and his depiction here of the life in an isolated town, with its decrepit farms, overgrown plantations, and dense woodlands, is memorably rich and exact, as is his description of the complex, often violent, and painfully intimate relations between the races. There’s not much surprise about the bloody outcome of the clash between Hart and Tison, nor is there meant to be. Kilgo is clearly more interested in finding a fictional metaphor for the complexities of desire and race. As such, his first novel is a memorable success’sad, vivid, and haunting.

Pub Date: May 21, 1998

ISBN: 0-8203-2002-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Univ. of Georgia

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.