Another worthy book from a fine writer.
The third book and second story collection from Kane (The Report, 2010, etc.) offers 12 lucid, elegant and immersive stories about interpersonal strains and tensions among lovers, neighbors, children and their parents, and so on.
In "Lucky Boy," a young New Yorker's relationship with his dry cleaner veers from the comforts of mere commerce, and he finds himself cast in the role of catch-playing father figure—until and unless his fiancee, who's colder and more city-savvy, steps in to end it, an intervention he seems both to desire and to dread. In "American Lawn," a Croatian refugee rents garden space in a city backyard during a drought—and exposes a rift between lonely neighbors, devoted to their rivalrous ideas about what neighborliness is and should be, who compete in ever more childish and embarrassing ways for his attention. In the book's most poignant story, "Next in Line," a grieving mother haunts the drug store where an acerbic older woman seems simultaneously to chide her for bad parenting and to predict—with heart-rending accuracy—her toddler's imminent death. "The Essentials of Acceleration" features a 40-year-old woman who never achieved escape velocity. She lives in her hometown, stuck in a way she knows all too well but can't quite acknowledge, alongside her father, a retired professor who stays active and popular despite his gathering infirmities. She's haunted less by the tragedy of her mother's accidental death than by resentment of her father for having, unforgivably, soldiered on afterward. Several of the stories feature inward, dour, private people who simultaneously envy and scorn those who seem to have an easier time of it: the gift of gab, the sunny disposition, the ability to put heartbreak and recrimination behind them, the yen to act rather than merely longing silently and crabbily from the sidelines. The stories are quiet—Kane has little interest in stylistic pyrotechnics, flashy plots or formal play—but they are subtle, persuasive and psychologically complex.
Another worthy book from a fine writer.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55597-636-1
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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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