Another deceptively slender novel from French writer Toussaint, more austere than The Bathroom (1990) but just as accomplished. Toussaint is not so much a minimalist as a writer of superb economy, knowing just when to use the baroque, even fulsome, effect and when not, which he does brilliantly in this low-key story of the daily life of a man determined to be a nonentity. Monsieur, a scientist by profession, lives a life of purposeful order and passivity. He is not fond of the telephone and finds most people too volatile. At work he follows a precise daily routine and at meetings sits beside his supervisor, ``scrupulously attentive to remain in line with her body, drawing back when she moved backwards so as to be never too directly exposed.'' At home he creates similar shelters. Though rejected by his fiancÇe, he moves in with her parents; allows himself to type a thesis for a bossy neighbor; spends a weekend in the country with a group of high-placed scientists and politicians; and baby-sits his nieces for his promiscuous brother—but these random events begin to disturb him. Monsieur, ``who asked no more from life than a chair. There hovering between two compromises, he sought refuge in the calming performance of simple gestures,'' had thought that he could separate himself from the flow of time, but now he was beginning to realize that there ``were not two entities but only one, a vast movement that bore him irresistibly away.'' A surprise kiss is his moment of epiphany and release: ``It was no more difficult than that.'' Life was now ``mere child's play, for Monsieur.'' A splendidly realized portrait of a non-hero, whose boring life is anything but.
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-7145-2911-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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
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
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