Another impressive addition to an already impressive oeuvre.
Elegance and versatility—those familiar Barnes strengths define this latest story collection from the distinguished British author.
Six of these 14 stories are about contemporary relationships; another four are miscellaneous; and there’s a quartet called "At Phil & Joanna’s," presenting four separate evenings of dinner-table conversation. The same hosts and guests form a group of upper-middle-class Londoners; well-fed, well-lubricated, kicking back. Their collective profile is fun-loving, casually erudite, liberal and bawdy. The conversation ranges from dog poop and prosthetic testicles to Latin tags and climate change to an overview of sex and love. Barnes artfully calibrates their dialogue so that it transcends brittle repartee to convey warm conviviality and humanist concern. Two of the relationship stories ("East Wind" and "Trespass") feature male protagonists looking for a mate. In ways both funny and painful, they fumble their approaches to women. Two others are not quite so successful; "Sleeping with John Updike" fails to live up to its risqué title, while in "Gardeners’ World," marital problems are obscured by horticultural detail. Their partial failure is more than redeemed by "Marriage Lines," a wrenching study of a young widower’s grief, and the powerful title story about two marriages. The narrator’s admiration for his parents’ enduring intimacy grows as his own marriage crumbles. To diversify the collection, Barnes moves back in time."Carcassonne" is a piquant inquiry into erotic attraction; the great Italian liberator Garibaldi figures prominently. Further back, in 18th-century Vienna, a most unusual doctor seeks to cure the blindness of a musical prodigy. The formal narration fits the period like a glove ("Harmony"). Most memorable, though, is "The Limner." Long ago, a humble artist traveled on horseback, seeking commissions to paint portraits. Wadsworth was also a deaf mute. He is stiffed by a pompous bureaucrat, but nonetheless gives his undeserving sitter the dignity he craved. It is a moving affirmation of true dignity.
Another impressive addition to an already impressive oeuvre.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-59526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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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