An unusually structured, thoroughly researched and deeply felt work that creates an intimate portrait of two women and the...
In Berengaut’s (The Estate of Wormwood and Honey, 2012) second novel, two women discuss love, physics, infidelity, polyamory, mathematics, the Holocaust and the importance of family.
Imagine if My Dinner with Andre, with its emphasis on dialogue and the nuanced analysis of past adventure and philosophy, took place between two contemporary, highly accomplished women having lunch. Berengaut has accomplished something remarkable: a novel composed entirely of dialogue, with no chapter breaks, that is riveting from beginning to end. Sabine Stern is an academic who is regularly invited to speak at top-tier universities, while Renata Rubinstein is a world-famous, wealthy intellectual married to a genius mathematician named Mark. Ostensibly, Sabine has arranged to meet Renata about a “personal matter,” but the conversation takes on incredible scope and depth, traversing the two women’s vast experience and knowledge, including their ancestors’ time in Nazi Germany and concepts of poetry and sexual fidelity. The narrative begins to take shape when Sabine mentions that she received an email out of the blue from Renata’s husband about a mathematical concept related to her work. Gradually, the women discover that their connection is about more than a simple chance email; the interweaving of their backgrounds, philosophies and approaches toward living has the potential to dramatically alter each of their destinies. The book’s strength is simultaneously its weakness. As Sabine and Renata discuss at one point: “It’s hard to believe that, once upon the time, people used to read philosophy for pleasure.” “It is a rather strange experience, reading those books. You understand the words, you sort of think that you understand the sentences, but the sense of paragraphs—not to say anything about whole chapters—is completely elusive.” Indeed, the engrossing narrative, which twists and turns through a variety of historical anecdotes and personal experiences, has no natural breaks, almost forcing readers to finish it in one sitting. However, the experience is a richly rewarding one, and the surprise ending is poignant without being sentimental. These mature, thoughtful women are unlike almost any others in popular contemporary literature, and their conversation—long, gorgeous, encompassing—is one of the most memorable in literature of the last 10 years.
An unusually structured, thoroughly researched and deeply felt work that creates an intimate portrait of two women and the decades they have thoughtfully inhabited.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500856175
Page Count: 256
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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