These stories manage the impressive feat of blending gritty realism with more surreal strands, making for a gripping read.
In this tense collection of short stories, Novakovich (Heritage of Smoke, 2017, etc.) explores the nature of conflict—from people ensnared in civil wars to the uneasy bonds between humans and animals.
Surprises abound in Novakovich’s latest collection, which covers the lives of people in Eastern Europe grappling with authoritarianism, internal conflicts, and the pressures within their own communities. These are familiar themes, but Novakovich keeps things unpredictable from the outset: The title story, about a beekeeper living in the midst of a war zone, ends on a frenzied, surreal note that hints at the author's ability to both channel realism and, when the occasion demands, undermine it entirely. “Fritz: A Fable” is set at a time of war between Serbia and Croatia and centers around a couple, each with ties to one side. They own a dog and cat who are in constant conflict, which both echoes and eventually transcends the larger chaos around them. Much like the title story, “Wool” also involves animals and ends unexpectedly: In this case, a girl’s father procures a lamb for her, and she bonds with it—but soon, the father’s cynicism and abuse take things in a bleak direction. Even with that in mind, the ending comes off as genuinely shocking. This collection isn’t simply an immersion in human horrors, though: “Charity Deductions,” about a well-meaning, wealthy American whose good intentions backfire memorably, takes on a more overtly satirical tone. Novakovich expertly probes the minds of the virtuous, the menacing, and the self-deluded in equal measure; the ending of “A Variation on a Theme of Boccaccio,” in which the narrator realizes he’s hardly the hero of his own story, is particularly harrowing.
These stories manage the impressive feat of blending gritty realism with more surreal strands, making for a gripping read.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945814-47-1
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Dzanc
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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