Readers well acquainted with Quixote will see some of Branston’s episodes coming a league away. Even so, he breathes new...
A picaresque first novel evokes 17th-century La Mancha and its odd inhabitants, not least of them Spain’s most famous writer.
It’s a premise to do Borges proud: “the author of Don Quixote, one Miguel Cervantes, deceased” authorizes a new author, whose mind “has never found a true purchase in a worthy ideal,” to continue the tale of the Knight of Woeful Countenance, and said heir makes good. British writer Branston does a fine job of channeling Cervantes, capturing the original’s stateliness and good-natured scenarios, and turning in a sometimes riotous, sometimes-somber story in which Quixote’s author meets his own creation. Cervantes, it develops, has a Sancho Panza–like pal named Pedro, whose ambition it was “to be the world’s finest merchant in traded goods” and who seems to know everyone worth knowing; the old knight, just released from a lunatic asylum after a 20-year hitch, is just one of his acquaintances, and in due course other characters reminiscent of those in the original Quixote fall in to take their part in the madcap adventures. This being a postmodern work, though without the reverential self-referentiality of so much of its breed, Branston makes a few digs at the business of writing and publishing. Most of his efforts, however, are directed at delivering a reasonable simulacrum of Cervantine storytelling, and in this he acquits himself nobly. Indeed, in his hands Cervantes himself becomes a fine hero, as he was in real life; readers will find it richly satisfying to see the famed author, armed with “more-than-regulation-length sword,” attending to miscreants and book pirates even as the forlorn Errant Knight bumbles and stumbles across the parched countryside, fighting for truth, justice and the chivalric way.
Readers well acquainted with Quixote will see some of Branston’s episodes coming a league away. Even so, he breathes new life into a classic but little-read tale. A pleasure through and through.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4928-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
