British art critic and novelist Berger's (Corker's Freedom, 1993, etc.) poetic sensibilities, already acute, are heightened here magnificently in a wrenching tale of young lovers whose future is poisoned by AIDS but who nevertheless seize the present, making their wedding a fulfilling, time-transcendent event. Legitimizing the story's many temporal shifts is a blind Greek peddler who hears many voices across the years, an aural Tiresias, after selling a charm to the bride's father in an Athens market. Jean is a French railworker of Italian ancestry, who met the Czech Zdena when she fled the Soviet crackdown in her homeland after the Prague Spring of '68. Love and their daughter Ninon kept them together, but after eight years in exile, Zdena's yearning took her back to Prague alone, and there she stayed. Ninon grew to be strong-willed, beautiful, and thirsty for new experiences. In an Egyptian exhibition in Verona, she meets Gino, self-assured son of a Lombardy scrap-dealer making his living as a traveling salesman, but she severs their relationship when she learns a previous lover has left her HIV-positive. Gino persists in his attentions, even after hearing Ninon's secret, and persuades her to marry him; with the wedding to take place in a town south of Venice where the broad Po river meets the sea, her parents make their separate, soul-searching treks to be there. The wedding scene itself — a fluid, life-affirming mix of feast, fest, romance, and family unity — also contains the images of dying that will be Ninon and Gino's inevitable future. It is a haunting climax, flawlessly formed. While the tragedy of AIDS has spawned many poignant works in the last decade, few have achieved the level of emotional, psychological, and physical harmony found here.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0679767770
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.
A sly take on modern work culture and social conformism, told through one woman’s 18-year tenure as a convenience store employee.
Keiko Furukura, a 36-year-old resident of Tokyo, is so finely attuned to the daily rhythms of Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart—where she’s worked since age 18—that she’s nearly become one with the store. From the nails she fastidiously trims to better work the cash register to her zeal in greeting customers with store manual–approved phrases to her preternatural awareness of its subtle signals—the clink of jangling coins, the rattle of a plastic water bottle—the store has both formed her and provided a purpose. And for someone who’s never fully grasped the rules governing social interactions, she finds a ready-made set of behaviors and speech patterns by copying her fellow employees. But when her younger sister has a baby, questions surrounding her atypical lifestyle intensify. Why hasn’t she married and had children or pursued a more high-flying career? Keiko recognizes society expects her to choose one or the other, though she’s not quite sure why. When Shiraha—a “dead-ender” in his mid-30s who decries the rigid gender rules structuring society—begins working at the store, Keiko must decide how much she’s willing to give up to please others and adhere to entrenched expectations. Murata provides deceptively sharp commentary on the narrow social slots people—particularly women—are expected to occupy and how those who deviate can inspire bafflement, fear, or anger in others. Indeed, it’s often more interesting to observe surrounding characters’ reactions to Keiko than her own, sometimes leaving the protagonist as a kind of prop. Still, Murata skillfully navigates the line between the book’s wry and weighty concerns and ensures readers will never conceive of the “pristine aquarium” of a convenience store in quite the same way.
A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2825-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
A darkly evocative work about young girls, grief, and the unsettling, aching need to belong.
A newcomer to an all-girls orphanage invents a violent game for the other children to play each night.
Marina is in the back seat of her parents’ car during the accident that kills them both. “My father died instantly, my mother in the hospital,” is the refrain she hears, over and over again, from the doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists at the hospital. It’s the same refrain she repeats to the adults at the orphanage to which she is soon taken. Barba’s (August, October, 2015, etc.) fourth novel to appear in English describes the haunting, mysterious world of prepubescent girls. He switches back and forth from Marina’s perspective to the collective point of view of the other girls. They’re a kind of unified body, and Marina, who is new and freshly beset by grief, is not unlike a virus in their midst. One day, Marina impales a caterpillar on a stick, and the other girls gather round to watch. Not long after, Marina invents a “game” for the girls to play each night. “It’s easy,” she tells them. “Each night, one of you is the doll. I put on her makeup, and she’s the doll. And the rest of us look at her and play with her. She’ll be a good dolly, and we’ll be good to her.” It’s a dark, insoluble game, both erotic and violent. Barba’s descriptions of the furtive, nearly cabalistic world of children are wonderful and disturbing. The border between what is real and what isn’t has been fogged over. His writing is both lyrical and spare, and the slim volume, which can be read in a single sitting, carries a heft far outweighing its physical presence. Barba’s girls, and their game, will linger in the minds of his readers.
A darkly evocative work about young girls, grief, and the unsettling, aching need to belong.Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945492-00-6
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Transit Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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