Could have been loopy in less deft hands, but Ciment (The Tattoo Artist, 2005, etc.) keeps things lively and edgy throughout.
Three disparate narrative elements—a possible terrorist attack, the real-estate market in New York City, a sick dachshund—somehow cohere into a blackly comic yet tenderly touching novel.
Alex and Ruth Cohen have been living in the same co-op apartment for 45 years. Alex is an artist; his current project is turning his wife’s FBI file into a manuscript. Ruth, who has put her political past to rest, is a retired teacher with a fondness for Anton Chekhov. Right now, the elderly couple has plenty to worry about. Highest on the list is their beloved dog Dorothy, whose back legs seem to be paralyzed after a seizure. Also, they can no longer handle the five flights of steps to their apartment, so they’re looking to sell it and find something more convenient. Perhaps, with the million dollars they’ve been led to believe the place is worth, they could even move to the Jersey shore or to that island off the coast of North Carolina that Ruth has read about. There are, however, numerous flies in this particular ointment, for something odd is happening in the Midtown Tunnel. A gas truck has jackknifed, and police are quickly evacuating everyone; rumor spreads that it could be a terrorist attack. Alex and Ruth try to follow the news reports that come in fast and furious. Abdul Pamir, the truck driver, carjacks a taxi, then abandons it and takes hostages in a Bed Bath & Beyond. If terrorists are that close, Alex and Ruth’s real-estate agent tells them, the apartment could be worth far less than they had hoped. Then there’s the state of Dorothy’s health…
Could have been loopy in less deft hands, but Ciment (The Tattoo Artist, 2005, etc.) keeps things lively and edgy throughout.Pub Date: June 30, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-42522-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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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