Though the forced, contrived plot almost submerges the novel, the sensuous apprehension of a distant, perilous, ineffably...
A vigorous picture of life near “James Bay in the Arctic Lowlands of Ontario” distinguishes this second novel from the Canadian-born author (Three Day Road, 2005).
The book, which was awarded Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize, begins unevenly, with a setup much too reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient: a history “dreamed” by Cree Indian bush pilot Will Bird, as he lies comatose in a hospital bed, and juxtaposed with the story recalled by Will’s niece Annie, keeping a vigil beside him, of her southward journey to seek her missing younger sister Suzanne, a runaway who became a successful fashion model and “party girl.” Boyden ends it even more awkwardly, with a semi-surprising disclosure about a crime that still pursues Will, and a concluding reconciliation that’s improbable and sentimental. Between these extremes, the book is frequently energized by visionary splendor and raw emotional force. Annie is a fantastically observed character. A tough, vibrant woman, she’s sustained by an increasingly loving relationship with her withdrawn “protector” Gordon and is unafraid to enter the worlds of narcotic and sexual excess that appear to have claimed Suzanne. Alas, the Manhattan scenes too often read like inert chick lit. Fortunately, the story is redeemed by Boyden’s rich portrayal of the stoical Will, most fully realized in a subtly fragmented account of Will’s arduous stay on a remote island (Akimiski), where wind and weather stalk him as relentlessly as do his old enemies—and his only companions are an elderly settler couple who seem to possess an almost mystical knowledge of his history, marauding polar bears and, in a brilliantly resonating image, a whale skeleton that washed up out of the bay.
Though the forced, contrived plot almost submerges the novel, the sensuous apprehension of a distant, perilous, ineffably beautiful world draws us in and won’t let us go.Pub Date: March 23, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02057-7
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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