A respectful but hectic tale of national collapse and grief that falls short of epic emotional resonance.
Three youngsters—a deranged child, a Jewish survivor, and a singer of laments—endure the terrors of World War II Greece and the equally savage civil war that follows.
Revisiting the Greek culture and history explored in his first novel, Brown (Blood Dance, 1993) devotes his second to the brutal events, both imposed and self-inflicted, in that country during the mid-20th century. The story is narrated into a tape recorder left in the possession of an old woman, Aliki, by a Greek-American scholar researching “rural lament practices.” But Aliki, the last professional lamenter—a singer of dirges following someone's death—in her northeastern Greek village, uses most of the tape to relate the dark events of her teenage years. After the occupying Nazi forces shot her father in 1943, she was taken in by a kindly neighbor, Chrysoula. But Chrysoula is hiding two Jewish refugees in her cellar, teenage Stelios and his mother, Sophia. When the Germans discover them—perhaps tipped off by Takis, Chrysoula’s son—a melee ensues during which both Sophia and Chrysoula are killed. Now Stelios, Aliki, and Takis leave for Athens, beginning a long, episodic journey of love and survival, funded by the shadow-puppet performances they give. Takis, a jealous child of 11, appears unhinged, perhaps schizophrenic, or maybe he’s a violent sprite, emblematic of the madness that has descended on the divided nation; Aliki has a seer’s gifts in her lamenting skills; while Stelios’ role is both puppeteer and conduit to history and literature (notably The Iliad). Events come thick and fast—guerilla attacks, abduction, imprisonment, death—but the restless plot, shifting locations, and heaping up of suffering become overwhelming, fragmenting the overall impact.
A respectful but hectic tale of national collapse and grief that falls short of epic emotional resonance.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-58340-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s...
The acclaimed author of The Underground Railroad (2016) follows up with a leaner, meaner saga of Deep South captivity set in the mid-20th century and fraught with horrors more chilling for being based on true-life atrocities.
Elwood Curtis is a law-abiding, teenage paragon of rectitude, an avid reader of encyclopedias and after-school worker diligently overcoming hardships that come from being abandoned by his parents and growing up black and poor in segregated Tallahassee, Florida. It’s the early 1960s, and Elwood can feel changes coming every time he listens to an LP of his hero Martin Luther King Jr. sermonizing about breaking down racial barriers. But while hitchhiking to his first day of classes at a nearby black college, Elwood accepts a ride in what turns out to be a stolen car and is sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory that looks somewhat like the campus he’d almost attended but turns out to be a monstrously racist institution whose students, white and black alike, are brutally beaten, sexually abused, and used by the school’s two-faced officials to steal food and supplies. At first, Elwood thinks he can work his way past the arbitrary punishments and sadistic treatment (“I am stuck here, but I’ll make the best of it…and I’ll make it brief”). He befriends another black inmate, a street-wise kid he knows only as Turner, who has a different take on withstanding Nickel: “The key to in here is the same as surviving out there—you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course.” And if you defy them, Turner warns, you’ll get taken “out back” and are never seen or heard from again. Both Elwood’s idealism and Turner’s cynicism entwine into an alliance that compels drastic action—and a shared destiny. There's something a tad more melodramatic in this book's conception (and resolution) than one expects from Whitehead, giving it a drugstore-paperback glossiness that enhances its blunt-edged impact.
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s novel displays its author’s facility with violent imagery and his skill at weaving narrative strands into an ingenious if disquieting whole.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-53707-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
