A heartwarming novel that respects grief and honors the special bond between a grandparent and grandchild.
Moore (Time’s Tyranny, 2017, etc.), a winner of an Independent Publisher Book Award, delivers a story about grief, family bonds, and the transformative power of love.
Tilda Carr has long had difficulty sleeping, but one night, she finally has her first restful slumber in months—only to wake up a widow. Her 40-year marriage ends with her husband Harold’s sudden death in his sleep, and she’s left reeling. She and her daughter, Laura, make an oath to get through the five stages of grief before Harold’s yahrzeit—the one-year anniversary of his death. However, the coming year has more in store for them than they realize. Tilda’s granddaughter, Tilly, hides her pain at her beloved grandfather’s passing as well as another, secret struggle that she barely understands herself. Tilda’s attempts to reach out to her are well-intentioned but clumsy at first and fraught with common, generational misunderstandings. To make matters worse, she also takes on the emotional burden of a neighbor and his daughter, whose mother left them to start a new life. Tilda struggles to be a good friend, a good mother and grandmother, and a woman navigating a life without her own best friend. This is an intimate look into the aftermath of spousal death that offers poignant observations on how grief can hide around every corner—in scents, in songs, in strangers. Tilda is so consumed by her loss that she closes herself off emotionally and doesn’t allow herself to move forward. When she gets an offer to go on a trip with a male friend who could turn into a romantic partner, her negative reaction captures how one can be unwilling to betray one’s grief with happiness. The novel also shows how Tilda fails to hear a loved one’s quiet pleas for help. As the protagonist begins to heal, she realizes how vital it is to cherish one’s relatives and how important it is to listen with an open, accepting heart.
A heartwarming novel that respects grief and honors the special bond between a grandparent and grandchild.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-477-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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