A truly representative sampling of this unpredictable author’s grind-it-out strengths and mind-boggling weaknesses.
The lingering residue of survivor’s guilt and trauma shape a battered woman’s life on the run in Oates’s latest novel (Black Girl/White Girl, 2006, etc.), which is stuffed with echoes of her earlier fiction.
Following a terse “Prologue” in which young wife and mother Rebecca Tignor rejects memories of her harsh immigrant father Jacob Schwart, we observe her fending off a stranger who follows her home from her factory job, addressing her as “Hazel Jones,” a name that means nothing to her. Then, in juxtaposed narratives, we learn of her girlhood among a German-American family scarred by the resentment of her father (a teacher and intellectual reduced to working as a cemetery caretaker) and the violence of her older brother, and the life to which she alone escaped after a family tragedy: a hopeful marriage to traveling salesman Niles Tignor, blighted by his violent abuse of Rebecca and their young son “Niley.” Escaping again, Rebecca reinvents herself (as “Hazel Jones,” also renaming Niley “Zacharias”), moves around upstate New York for years and finds love with a decent older man (Chet Gallagher), who also nurtures “Zacharias’s” precocious musical gift—until the pull of her own life brings Rebecca/Hazel to obsession with the nihilistic “wisdom” preached by her doubtless insane father. The arc thus traced virtually repeats that of Oates’s 1967 novel A Garden of Earthly Delights (itself recently republished, in substantially rewritten form), and circumstantial details recall similar material in such novels as The Assassins (1975) and Angel of Light (1981). Furthermore, the novel ends with an exchange of letters which incorporates a short story published in her recent collection High Lonesome (2006). The resulting patchwork is an amalgam of tedious rehashing and compelling drama, whose best feature is Oates’s painstaking portrayal of a woman so persistently exploited and betrayed that she loses all sense of who she actually is.
A truly representative sampling of this unpredictable author’s grind-it-out strengths and mind-boggling weaknesses.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-123682-9
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read...
Marrs’ debut novel traces the stories of five people who find their soul mates—or do they?
Imagine if you could submit to a simple DNA test and then receive your Match in your email. Not just an online date who might be geographically compatible, but a true and unique genetically destined partner. While the potential long-term benefits may seem to outweigh the negative consequences, the system is far from infallible; as any science-fiction fan could tell you, if it sounds too good to be true, there’s usually a catastrophe lurking at the other end. Marrs’ novel traces five individuals who meet their Matches under varying circumstances and with widely conflicting outcomes. During the course of their romantic adventures (and misadventures), the entire DNA matching algorithm will prove to be susceptible to hacking, also proving that (gasp!) just because something may be driven by science doesn’t mean that it’s free from the world of human error. The philosophy posed by the novel speaks not just to the power of love and the laws of attraction, but also serves as a commentary on today’s world of genetic exploration. Do these breakthroughs simplify our lives, or do they make us lazy, replacing the idea of “destiny” or “fate” with “science” as a larger power that we don’t need to question? These ideas keep the novel moving along and create a deeper level of interest, since most of the narrative threads are fairly predictable. The two exceptions are the psychopathic serial killer who meets his Match and begins to lose interest in killing and the heterosexual man matched with another man, both of whom must then redefine sexuality and love, commitment and family.
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read all in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-00510-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.
Originally published in Sweden, this charming debut novel by Backman should find a ready audience with English-language readers.
The book opens helpfully with the following characterizations about its protagonist: “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.” What the book takes its time revealing is that this dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold. Readers will see the basic setup coming a mile away, but Backman does a crafty job revealing the full vein of precious metal beneath Ove’s ribs, glint by glint. Ove’s history trickles out in alternating chapters—a bleak set of circumstances that smacks an honorable, hardworking boy around time and again, proving that, even by early adulthood, he comes by his grumpy nature honestly. It’s a woman who turns his life around the first time: sweet and lively Sonja, who becomes his wife and balances his pessimism with optimism and warmth. By 59, he's in a place of despair yet again, and it’s a woman who turns him around a second time: spirited, knowing Parvaneh, who moves with her husband and children into the terraced house next door and forces Ove to engage with the world. The back story chapters have a simple, fablelike quality, while the current-day chapters are episodic and, at times, hysterically funny. In both instances, the narration can veer toward the preachy or overly pat, but wry descriptions, excellent pacing and the juxtaposition of Ove’s attitude with his deeds add plenty of punch to balance out any pathos.
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3801-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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