Fiction with a strong moral edge, offering a Rashomon-like response to a classic novel.
The nameless Arab victim of Albert Camus’ The Stranger receives a biography and a name in this thoughtful, controversial rejoinder from the other side of the colonial question.
“Musa, Musa, Musa…I like to repeat that name from time to time so it doesn’t disappear.” So writes Algerian novelist Daoud, whose protagonist returns Camus’ favor by skirting around the name and facts of his most famous book, except to complain that Musa is destined to “remain ‘the Arab’ forever.” Meursault, Camus' murderer, is long dead, and so, of course, is Musa. Unlike Meursault’s mother, though, Musa’s is alive—ancient but alive—and still trying to get recognition as the progenitor of a martyr in the cause of Algerian independence. Alas, the bureaucracy is even more indifferent than Meursault. As for the brother/narrator, he’s a barroom kvetcher and keeper of grudges who, like Meursault, can barely be moved to stir—until one day, some accident of fate compels him to act, finally, and take his lumps for it. The parallels between Meursault and him are numerous, and though the mood of Daoud’s slender novel, originally published in French in 2013, is more plaintive, it is also grudgingly respectful toward its predecessor: “A masterpiece, my friend. A mirror held up to my soul and to what would become of me in this country, between Allah and ennui.” It is for his sly insertions of religious questioning that Daoud has come under fire in his native country, having been the recent subject of a fatwa for venturing to suggest, in the final chapter, that the proper business of humankind is to tend to life on the mortal plane. Free-speech advocates may want to praise the author for his daring view on that matter, but this novel is praiseworthy enough as it stands.
Fiction with a strong moral edge, offering a Rashomon-like response to a classic novel.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59051-751-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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