A Navy man stumbles his way on board the USS Gays in the Military and comes away with an engaging, candid story about manhood, the ambiguities of rank, and individual conscience. Legal affairs officer Mark Palmer, idle in San Jose aboard the USS Modoc, is called to Captain Morgan Bennet’s office and presented with a letter alleging that petty officer Marion Lamm has committed a homosexual act. Bennet won’t have this sort of thing on his ship and demands an immediate court-martial. Though Palmer succeeds in lowering the charges, he’s also sure the claim is too flimsy to stand. But Palmer’s 16 years of service have put him up for a promotion that Captain Bennet can cancel as he likes, so the junior Palmer does as ordered. (Twenty-year Navy veteran Lane is clearly on familiar ground here.) None of this sits well with Lynn, Palmer’s lover and a former Navy wife, but Lynn is conflicted, too. Her ex-husband, the shadowy Tony, prevents her from getting on with her life by holding child-support payments for their daughter hostage. This doesn’t sit well with Palmer, who knows that his love for the mother and daughter is honest—unlike his enthusiasm for the case against Lamm. The trial, a deftly written, back-and-forth affair, pits Palmer against defense attorney Lt. Templemann. While Palmer never quite gives an opinion on gays in the military, he does know Lamm—persecuted by the sailors for busting up their on-board drug abuse—is innocent. Captain Bennet’s outrageous prejudice is never explored, but Palmer’s own romantic, gender, and career conflicts are fully and humanely elaborated. In resolving them, author Lane doesn’t take the easy out, and the conclusion seems probable if unexpected. An informed depiction of the “new” military, all told in Lane’s fluent voice.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-882593-29-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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