A brilliantly executed and altogether charming collection of linked stories, by the Croatian-born author of the autobiographical Apricots from Chernobyl (not reviewed). There's great variety in these 17 feisty narratives, several portraying the childhood and adolescent experiences of a recurring protagonist: the son of a clog-maker who, at different stages of his growth, discovers how fundamental to all living creatures is the yearning for freedom (``Yahbo the Hawk''); endures the complex rite of passage triggered by his father's death (``Apple''); undergoes a reluctant religious education (in the marvelous ``The Eye of God''), during which he progresses from the romantic wish to become ``An evangelist . . . A Billy Grahamovich'' to a warier accommodation with the Deity; and, in the climactic ``Raw Paper,'' recognizes that he's outgrown his European origins and pens a valediction to them as he prepares to leave his homeland for America. Other stories, which take place in various Yugoslavian and other Eastern European settings, introduce such vividly drawn characters as the village girl (in ``Wool'') who finally stands up to the abusive father whose mistreatment of her extends to her pet lamb; the stoical beekeeper (of ``Honey in the Carcase'') who patiently bears the violence brought by civil strife but snaps when his apiary is endangered; and (in the title story) the plain country woman, renowned for her cookery, who learns how to repay the gluttonous men who marry her to exploit her. Novakovich's essentially comic depictions of ordinary people bewildered and buffered by sophisticated exterior forces are somewhat reminiscent of the work of the Czech master Jaroslav Hasek. But his incandescent style is all his own: an exhilarating hybrid compounded of wry understatement, dazzling aphoristic wit, infusions of peasant superstition, and a deadpan, down-to-earth Central European variant of Latin American magical realism. Wonderful stories that won't be easily forgotten. It's our good fortune, and should be a source of some national pride, that Novakovich is now an American writer.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-55597-229-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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
SEEN & HEARD
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in...
Huzzah! Martin (The Ice Dragon, 2014, etc.) delivers just what fans have been waiting for: stirring tales of the founding of the Targaryen line.
Duncan—Dunk for short—has his hapless moments. He’s big, nearly gigantic, “hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen.” Uncertain of himself, clumsy, and alone in the world, he has every one of the makings of a hero, if only events will turn in that direction. They do, courtesy of a tiny boy who steals into the “hedge knight” Dunk’s life and eventually reveals a name to match that of Ser Duncan the Tall—an altogether better name, at that, than Duncan of Flea Bottom would have been. Egg, as the squire calls himself, has a strange light about him, as if he will be destined to go on to better things, as indeed he will. Reminiscent of a simpler Arthur Rackham, the illustrations capture that light, as they do the growing friendship between Dunk and Egg—think Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues, if your knowledge of basketball matches your interest in fantasy. This being Martin, that friendship will not be without its fraught moments, its dangers and double crosses and knightly politics. There are plenty of goopily violent episodes as well, from jousts (“this time Lord Leo Tyrell aimed his point so expertly he ripped the Grey Lion’s helm cleanly off his head”) to medieval torture (“Egg…used the hat to fan away the flies. There were hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the still, hot air.”). Throughout, Martin delivers thoughtful foreshadowing of the themes and lineages that will populate his Ice and Fire series, in which Egg, it turns out, is much less fragile than he seems.
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in addition, they succeed in making fans want more—and with luck, Martin will oblige them with more of these early yarns.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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