A unique, entertaining attempt to reconcile the ambiguities of an ancient myth with its archaeological record.
In this debut installment of Ramakrishna’s retelling of the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, warrior Devavrata Bhishma recounts a long road of intrigues and misunderstandings that led to his renunciation of a crown and the eventual eruption of a war.
Devavrata is captured by his grandnephew Yudhishthira and mortally wounded by his former lover, Amba. Knowing that the arrowhead lodged in his lungs could kill him at any time, he agrees to tell Yudhishthira his life story. He starts with his mother’s suicide, which was caused by the harsh limits on the number of children that Devavrata’s father, Shantanu, had placed on Hastinapura families. After her death, Shantanu fell in love with a Naga girl, Satyavati, who—to protect her future children—demanded that Devavrata give up his royal claims. Devavrata had fallen in love with her as well and yielded to her desires, but they treated each other as enemies ever after. Tragedies haunted Devavrata through the four regencies he served, including the mysterious death of his nephew Chitrangada, which earned Devavrata the title of Bhishma (“The Terrible”), and the murder of his only son, Shikhandin. Yudhishthira and Vyaasa Shukla—Satyavati’s brother and the leader of Hastinapura’s society of poets—listen and contribute to Devavrata’s tale as the archivist and mnemonist Lomaharshana preserves the words for posterity. As they each take turns illuminating their corner of the story, it’s a joy for readers to watch how the characters, and their understanding of each other, shift. Ramakrishna’s explanations of the relevant traditions of Hastinapura, and the other societies around it, help to pace the heavier revelations. He also uses Devavrata’s descriptions to capture the Hastinapuran civilization, drawing from historical records and explaining details in appendices and frequent asides. The sheer amount of reference material can be overwhelming, especially when it repeats itself—for example, the etymology of the name “Drona” is explained three separate times—but the complex narrative and sociological elements justify its inclusion.
A unique, entertaining attempt to reconcile the ambiguities of an ancient myth with its archaeological record.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-939338-05-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kashi Software Architects
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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