Surprisingly affecting.
Procreation in three disparate centuries and societies is the primal subject of a prize-winning British writer’s original second novel.
Kavenna (Inglorious, 2007) creates an unusual structure for the book, establishing four different narrative strands and visiting each twice as she traces the urges, dangers, mythologies, moods and supreme force of childbirth across time. In a mid-19th-century Viennese mental asylum, deranged Professor Semmelweis babbles about a massacre of women, meaning the victims of puerperal fever infected by ignorant doctors passing germs from the dead to the living. Is this episode in fact an excerpt from The Moon, a novel about Semmelweis and the mythic mother written by 21st-century author and social outsider Michael Stone? Another of the book’s contemporary characters is heavily pregnant Brigid Hayes, who is juggling her toddler, her mother and her chaotic feelings while she undergoes an increasingly brutal labor. Meanwhile, in 2153, prisoners 730004, 5 and 6 speak of a totalitarian society on a ruined planet Earth, where the species is generated from harvested eggs and sperm. Yet even here the essential cycle of life defies suppression. Moving smoothly among gothic, naturalistic and futuristic modes and cross-connecting strands and ideas, Kavenna displays technical dexterity while offering a textured assessment—from the corporeal to the cerebral—of a totemic subject.
Surprisingly affecting.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9154-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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