An instructive portrait of the flying life, but one that requires some patience to enjoy.
Salter’s earliest (and nearly forgotten) two novels dealt with Air Force pilots—and now, in the literary version of a rescue mission, he has “entirely rewritten” the second one, his long-out-of-print The Arm of Flesh (1961).
Renamed Cassada, after its main character, the story centers on life in the 44th Fighter Squadron, stationed in Germany in 1955. The wars are over, so these F-86 pilots don’t have much to do other than fly exercise missions, drink at the Officers’ Club, and occasionally explore Munich. Into this virile, restless society, where pilots trust their wingmen with their lives, enters a wide-eyed newcomer, Cassada, who annoys everyone from the start: he’s afraid of caffeine, he can’t shoot straight, and he spills champagne on the commander’s wife. It also doesn’t help that, despite his naive charm, he’s a slightly petulant, reckless character who some consider a liability in the sky. Salter (most recently, Burning the Days, 1997, etc.), himself a former Air Force pilot, employs a fairly standard new-guy-in-town storyline, relying heavily on terse and occasionally flat dialogue to depict the conflicts in the squadron. More striking than his characterizations are the realistic observations of Air Force life—the younger men’s disappointment at not having a chance to see combat; the fact that good pilots die in accidents more often than bad ones; the abundance of weirdly memorable aeronautical terms. But these details, while vivid, don’t by themselves stir dramatic interest. Only in the final third do things get going, as two pilots repeatedly attempt to land through hazardous clouds. In these last chapters, Salter's most compelling character—the villainous weather—comes to the fore, and the author finally releases some verbal tension in a handful of breathtaking passages.
An instructive portrait of the flying life, but one that requires some patience to enjoy.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-887178-89-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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