by Joan Frank ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2007
Self-consciously elegiac while emotionally distant.
The dissolution of paradise is the theme of this novella about a community of youthful free spirits who mature into more settled conventionality and eventually fall back into the very patterns they were trying to avoid.
In the 1970s, young people dropping out of college or careers find themselves in Ferris, a northern California beach town. Since many are trying to escape their parents’ conventional expectations and their personal histories, they make living in the present moment their goal. Taking undemanding jobs, they spend their free time hanging out, banding together in a loose countercultural tribe. Naturally, romances spring up. Energetic Randy, who works with senior citizens, ends up with Alma, an earth-mother type. After his first girlfriend, Annie, dumps him, college dropout Graham turns to efficient, lively Darla. Both couples, like most of their community, marry and have kids. They start to create real homes, which require earning real money. Into the ’80s, the sense of communality lingers as Ferris gentrifies. Then at a tribe campfire on the beach, unexpected passion ignites between Randy and Darla. Along with physical attraction, the two share ambitions and a sense of entitlement that Alma and Graham lack. The affair goes on for years until their children are in their early teens, when Alma discovers the truth. After their subsequent divorces, Randy marries Darla and enters politics. Alma and Graham fade from view. Ferris becomes another sprawling bedroom suburb. Frank (Boys Keep Being Born, 2001, etc.) uses a narrator slightly removed from events. The reader learns only midway through that Annie is telling the story, piecing it together from letters she received after leaving Ferris. While imagining a past she did not witness, she implies rather than raises interesting questions about the seeds of the tribe’s failure. The individual characters remain sketches—even Graham, whom Annie presumably knew well.
Self-consciously elegiac while emotionally distant.Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-57962-148-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
Share your opinion of this book
More by Joan Frank
BOOK REVIEW
by Joan Frank
BOOK REVIEW
by Joan Frank
BOOK REVIEW
by Joan Frank
by Khaled Hosseini ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2003
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
13
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past.
Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the “sociopath” Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef. And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from a Taliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending.
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 1-57322-245-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
Share your opinion of this book
More by Khaled Hosseini
BOOK REVIEW
by Khaled Hosseini ; illustrated by Dan Williams
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Roy Jacobsen
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.