Banville, the English novelist who fictionalized the life of one classical astronomer in the modestly impressive Doctor Copernicus (1976), now turns to another: Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)—seen here as a long-sufferer, a victim of religious persecution, a husband with complaining wives (especially first wife Barbara, fat and harping), the son of an accused witch. . . and a court mathematician who's most often called on to make up detestable horoscopes. An outcast from Graz in Austria, the penniless Kepler is taken in by Tycho Brahe in the Dane's Bohemian castle, and is "swaddled in the folds of a personality larger far and madder than his own." Tycho's retinue is disorderly and disreputable, the old man himself rude and spiteful and vain—but Kepler holds onto his position: "For he knew now that Mars was the key to the secret of the workings of the world. He felt himself suspended in tensed bright air, a celestial swimmer." And, after Tycho's death (and those of Kepler's wife and children), Kepler still labors on, a sort of Job figure—as he acquires a greater system (harmony of the heavens) if no proportional increase in respect. (Galileo, for instance, either shuns or toys with him.) Banville is a rich writer, his language pleasingly and solidly ornate; but the book's first section—Kepler in Tycho's castle—is the only one that really involves. In subsequent sections, as was the case with much of Dr. Copernicus, the novel descends to mere exposition—excessively dependent on letters and flashbacks. So, while unusually well-written, this historical novel loses its thrust about halfway through, becoming centerless, retrospective, and sometimes flatly crammed with facts.
Pub Date: April 26, 1983
ISBN: 0679743707
Page Count: -
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1983
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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