A comic novel proves an agreeable change of pace for the ordinarily serious-minded Smiley (A Thousand Acres, 1991, etc.). At an unnamed Midwestern state university familiarly known as Moo U., the academic year 1989-90 is not going well. Budget cuts have been imposed by the state's yahoo governor; the faculty will have to clean their own offices, and food services will be taken over by McDonald's, which has no use for the unionized kitchen staff. Hostilities simmer between Dr. Lionel Gift, self-satisfied apostle of free-market economics, and "Chairman X," an unreconstructed '60s radical who heads the horticulture department. Other staff members jostling for position include Ivar Harstad, the university's ineffectual provost; Loraine Walker, his secretary, who really runs the place (and isn't above quietly shuffling money in and out of departments, depending on who gains her favor); associate English professor Timothy Monahan, whose social climbing in New York publishing is one of the book's funniest sequences; and earthy Helen Levy, professor of foreign languages, who likes to make life uncomfortable for her pompous male colleagues. A few students are sketched with equal incisiveness, though readers are unlikely to get emotionally involved with any of the characters. The fun comes from watching Smiley expertly juggle a huge cast in a convoluted plot that somehow manages to connect Gift's involvement with a sinister corporation that wants to mine gold from a virgin rain forest to a crazy local farmer's invention of a revolutionary new agricultural technique. The satire — of academic careerism, politics both left and right (though the conservatives get the worst lashing), and human foolishness of all sorts — stings but is never heavy-handed. As always in Smiley's fiction, expert storytelling propels the narrative forward, compensating here for a slightly chilly tone. Not as intellectually or morally challenging as the Pulitzer Prize-winner can be at her best, but Smiley coasting is still more stimulating than most writers trying their hardest.
Pub Date: April 7, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42023-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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