Contrived debut: pretentious, often silly.
Divorced journalist romances again—maybe.
Annie Hollerman didn’t think she’d ever love again after leaving her rich but dull husband (her mother’s nickname for him: the Cardboard Box). But her pal Laurie just won’t shut up about Jack DePaul, 50-ish features editor for a Baltimore daily—and, once introduced, the two circle each other warily, not wanting to be hurt again. Jack is still getting over his affair with the married Kathleen, a self-absorbed beauty who was happy to meet him now and then for hot but meaningless sex but wouldn’t leave her husband. Sadder but wiser, Jack ponders a big question: Could Annie, with her flowing, red-gold tresses, and fabulous cheekbones, be his soulmate? He woos her with carefully composed e-mails drawn on actual events in her life, in effect rewriting all her little sorrows and false starts into happy endings. Annie, however, doesn’t dare admit the Awful Thing she did years ago that got her fired from a North Carolina paper. She hopes Jack will never discover what it was because he’s sure to hate her when he does. They have so much in common, including a fondness for lattes and literature, casually quoting Tennyson and dismissing Raymond Carver in almost the same breath. It seems a match made in heaven, until a reporter actually does reveal the Awful Thing: Annie once plagiarized an article about inner-city housing and is still haunted by shame. Weepily, she reveals that her troubled family’s penchant for white lies drove her to it. But Jack loves her nonetheless. Planning a romantic tryst in New York brings him to a swanky hotel where he falls into the clutches of wicked Kathleen, who looks at his laptop while he’s otherwise occupied. Later, when Annie calls, Kathleen informs her that Jack used to write things like that for her, too, so ha! Annie is heartbroken. Will the star-crossed lovers ever find the happiness they deserve?
Contrived debut: pretentious, often silly.Pub Date: April 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-53080-8
Page Count: 244
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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