Set in an island nation, the novel drowns under the weight of its own confusing narrative.
A rich and privileged scion of a famous Malagasy family reacquaints himself with his roots after a trying period abroad in Ravaloson’s English language debut.
You can call Ietsy Razak spoiled. His ancestors might have sailed the seven seas to reach the island nation of Malagasy, but once there they established their dominance over generations: “They replaced the original masters of this land, transforming their existence into myth by integrating them, conquering them, or driving them to the wilder ends of the earth. They wound their way into the delicate, tightly interlaced caste system, asserting their dominance by force, alliances, or more often the timely breaking of alliances. They always supported the kingdom’s expansion and took their share of the spoils.” To this day, the Razaks know which side the bread is buttered on. Nevertheless when tragedy strikes close to home, Ietsy’s father packs him off to France, where Ietsy pursues law and continues his spoiled-brat existence: “What are you going to live off of?” a friend asks. “I…am blessed by the Gods and Ancestors,” Ietsy replies. Sure, pal! Such callous pigheadedness is not viable currency for long, and a rather banal incident, which grows out of control, forces Ietsy back to his homeland. By this time, his poor little rich boy act has gotten tiresome. What’s more, the unevenly translated novel also tries to tell the story of Malagasy’s origins, but that plotline turns out to be even more frustrating. “For the Children of the Broken Vow, the original people of the great island—whether they be those of the coasts, Vazimban-driaka; of the forests, Vazimban’ala; of the mountains, Vazimbam-bohitra; or the waters, Vazimban-drano, and later of the savannas, Vazimban-tanety, established where the great Ietsy had sculpted their ancestors—were all forever betrayed by those who came after belatedly answering the Great Ancestor’s call, more greedy and having made no vows, to seize the land of the Vazimbas.” A lot of head-scratching later, the central thesis remains as muddy as ever.
Set in an island nation, the novel drowns under the weight of its own confusing narrative.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9353-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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