Berger also treats us to reflections on Borges (buried in Geneva), Rembrandt’s Polish Rider, the Cro-Magnon and nights of...
Discrete scenes from a mellow, largely autobiographical journey through time and space.
Barriers collapse as the past invades the present and the dead mingle with the living in this distinguished European’s latest fiction. European, yes, because Berger (The Shape of a Pocket, 2001, etc.), an expatriate Englishman long resident in France, has the appropriate historical consciousness and breadth of vision—his journey here includes stops in Lisbon, Geneva, Krakow, London and Madrid. But it’s the dead who make the story so singular, especially Berger’s mother, who shows up in Lisbon, out of the blue. In appearance an old woman (she’s been dead ten years), she speaks at times with the coquettish voice of a 17-year-old. She and Berger exchange memories while shopping in a beautifully evoked Lisbon. “I’ve learnt a lot since my death,” she says teasingly, and the idea that the dead have a better perspective than mere mortals seems self-evident. Berger’s father doesn’t appear in person, but the son recalls their contentious relationship, softened by Berger the child’s intuitive understanding of the WWI ghosts haunting his father, a former infantry officer. The dead are everywhere. In a Krakow marketplace, Berger finds Ken, his greatest childhood influence and passeur (guide), while down the staircase of a Madrid hotel comes another teacher, the intensely solitary Tyler. There are certain key concepts here: endurance is one, invincibility another. The closing section is given over to the living, as an old friend brings his bride to the family home in the Polish countryside. Berger does weddings well (see To The Wedding, 1995), but one misses the dead; nothing else quite equals that opening Lisbon section, the raillery of dead mother and living son, the powerful demonstration that “everything is a continuum.”
Berger also treats us to reflections on Borges (buried in Geneva), Rembrandt’s Polish Rider, the Cro-Magnon and nights of innocent, unconsummated passion with a fellow art student as the bombs fell over wartime London. His endless curiosity restores the spirits.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-42336-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
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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