Typical Harrison: familiar, high-flown, and fleeting, with equal parts fine writing, weak plotting, compelling vision, comic...
Another trio of novellas from Harrison (Julip, 1994, etc.) that, to varying degrees of success, revisits themes and characters from earlier work.
In the title piece, 20-something Joe has a recent head injury that renders him uncivilized. The elderly narrator and a group of concerned others attempt to care for him, but he’s incorrigible enough to be uncontainable by men—and irresistible to women—in a piece allowing the author to wax Harrisonian on masculinity in crisis, civilization in crisis, and food: plot is secondary. “Westward Ho” resuscitates B.D., or Brown Dog (Julip; The Woman Lit by Fireflies, 1991, not reviewed), a Chippewa from Michigan, this time on a quest in Los Angeles for a stolen bearskin. B.D. is “simple,” but his defectiveness is congenital rather than the result of an accident as his “innocence” accounts for some amusing events and commentary on the absurdities of the West Coast, especially the film industry. The concluding novella, “I Forgot to Go to Spain,” features a late–middle-aged writer of slapdash biographies (“bioprobes”) who forsook earlier literary aspirations for easier, and more remunerative, hackwork. He contacts an ex-wife he hasn’t seen in 30 years, and transformational decisions ensue. All three tales bang away at a sameness of theme—inability to adapt, irritability at having to adapt, or self-loathing for having adapted—and all three portray the consumption of massive amounts of food and alcohol (aspiring oenophiles could begin a cellar on Harrison’s information). And there’s sex, natch, refreshingly not the p.c. academic variety about victimhood and selfhood, yet often puerile or implausible.
Typical Harrison: familiar, high-flown, and fleeting, with equal parts fine writing, weak plotting, compelling vision, comic antics, and locker-room anecdotes. The real point, from the man himself: “The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-87113-821-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ondaatje’s shrewd character study plays out in a smart, sophisticated drama, one worth the long wait for fans of wartime...
Acclaimed novelist Ondaatje (The Cat’s Table, 2011, etc.) returns to familiar ground: a lyrical mystery that plays out in the shadow of World War II.
In what is arguably his best-known novel, The English Patient (1992), Ondaatje unfolds at leisurely pace a story of intrigue and crossed destinies at the fringes of a global struggle. If anything, his latest moves even more slowly, but to deliberate effect. As it opens, with World War II grinding to a gaunt end, Nathaniel Williams, 14, and his 15-year-old sister, Rachel, learn that their parents are bound for newly liberated Singapore. Rose, their mother, has made the war years bearable with Mrs. Miniver–like resoluteness, but the father is a cipher. So he remains. Nathaniel and Rachel, Rose tells them, are to be left in London in the care of some—well, call them associates. They take over the Williams house, a band both piratical and elegant whose characters, from the classically inclined ringleader, The Moth, to a rough-edged greyhound racer, The Pimlico Darter, could easily figure in a sequel to Great Expectations. “It is like clarifying a fable,” Ondaatje writes in the person of Nathaniel, “about our parents, about Rachel and myself, and The Moth, as well as the others who joined us later.” But that clarification takes a few hundred pages of peering into murky waters: Nathaniel, in adulthood, learns that Rose, who slips back into England soon after sailing away, has been a person of many parts, secretive, in a war that has extended beyond the cease-fire, as partisans battle unrepentant fascists and the early Cold War begins to solidify, a time of betrayal and murder. If Rachel and Nathaniel’s adventures among their surrogate parents, who “did not in any way resemble a normal family, not even a beached Swiss Family Robinson,” are far from innocent, the lives of all concerned have hidden depths and secrets, some shameful, some inviting murderous revenge.
Ondaatje’s shrewd character study plays out in a smart, sophisticated drama, one worth the long wait for fans of wartime intrigue.Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52119-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Vividly and pointedly evoking prejudices "unconventional" couples among the current-day elderly faced (and some are still...
Honored last year with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her inspiring fiction and soul-baring memoirs, Allende (Ripper, 2014, etc.) offers a saga of a couple that keeps its affair secret for the better half of a century.
One of the lovers, Alma Belasco (nee Mendel), was barely 8 years old when her Polish parents, fearing rumors of war could prove true, sent her to live with her wealthy American uncle and aunt in San Francisco; bereft yet stoical when she arrives at Sea Cliff, she found allies who were destined to become “her life’s only loves”: her shy but devastatingly handsome and uber-intuitive cousin Nate Belasco; and her childhood playmate Ichimei Fukado, the charismatic son of the Belascos’ gardener, whose family was sent to an internment camp following the attack on Pearl Harbor. That this trio will ultimately help sort each other out is foregone, though how and when is not immediately clear. Allende prolongs the suspense, sprinkling Ichi’s soulful letters to Alma into the narrative of her postwar career as a textile artist with an outwardly perfect marriage and her abrupt decision to move out of the family estate into a Spartan room at Lark House—a slightly whackadoodle senior living residence that was bequeathed to the city by a chocolate magnate. At times Allende’s glib humor misfires (“I get them hooked on a TV series, because nobody wants to die before the final episode,” quips a member of the cleaning staff) or seems stunningly off-key (“Mexico greeted them with its well-known clichés”). Some readers may wince at a closeted gay character’s soft-serve admission: “Hearts are big enough to contain love for more than one person.” But among the white ponytailed hipsters and yoga-practicing widows at the senior center, Alma stands out—she’s haughty and self-centered and, after decades in the rag trade, “[dresses] like a Tibetan refugee.” She’s also a bit of a yenta: she deploys her part-time secretary, Irina (a doughty 23-year-old Romanian émigré), and grandson Seth (Irina’s love-struck suitor) to put her letters, diaries, documents, and other detritus in order. Then she toodles off in her tiny car every few weeks with a small overnight bag. Packed with silk nightgowns. Could this 80-something woman actually be meeting a lover, wonders Irina (who is grappling with some secret baggage of her own)? Just you wait.
Vividly and pointedly evoking prejudices "unconventional" couples among the current-day elderly faced (and some are still battling), Allende, as always, gives progress and hopeful spirits their due.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1697-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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