Warm and welcoming fiction that should benefit from some very strong word-of-mouth.
A New York architect loses her job and falls in love—in this spry little Brooklyn-set romance.
One thing among many that sets Jane Larsen apart from so many modern female protagonists is the refreshing lack of neuroses. Not to mention a purpose in her life. To wit: She isn’t happy with her fortysomething body but no more so than is to be expected. She doesn’t work at a glossy magazine, clocking in every day for over two decades at a Manhattan architectural firm instead. She’s got two teenaged daughters on the verge of becoming true hellions, an ex-husband who’s not exactly what she wanted (thus the divorce) but a decent enough father, and a gorgeous Park Slope brownstone that she restored herself. The complication in Jane’s life is not a midlife crisis—though she does have a certain lack of drive these days—but a much more practical concern: She just got fired. Stepping quite ably into the gap, Jane’s best friend Peggy sets her up with a guy who’s devastatingly handsome, adores Jane and, happily enough, needs a house designed. The fact that this is all just too neat should come as no surprise. More out of left field is the friendship Jane has just renewed with an old college flame, Jack, a fellow architect, via e-mail. Jane and Jack stumble toward romance in their increasingly passionate and revealing letters while, meantime, Jane tries to figure out what she’s going to do with her life. Perhaps after finishing the just-too-pat ending, some readers may think that they’ve been had, that Fields (Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, 1997, etc.) tricked them into thinking she was going to deliver a more serious and meaningful piece of work. But Fields has such a smooth, knowing way with her characters—only very occasionally slipping into melodrama—that it’s easy to let her get away with just about everything.
Warm and welcoming fiction that should benefit from some very strong word-of-mouth.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-688-14590-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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