A challenging but politically and morally astute take on the emotional impact of war.
The accidental leader of a Polish dissident group recalls his experiences in love and battle during World War II.
In the novel, first published in 1982, prize-winning Polish author Brandys (1916–2000) argues that relationships, particularly in times of political resistance, are always shot through with confusion and ambiguity. In the days before WWII, the narrator, Tom, is a Warsaw law student enchanted by Tola, an actress. Though she’s already committed to a lover, the two eventually strike up a sexual relationship of their own, and in his urge to get closer to Tola, Tom pursues some acting work. As the Nazis occupy Poland, he goes one fateful step further: To keep Tola from becoming embroiled in the real resistance, he invites her to join a resistance group he invented called Rondo (a name pulled from a Chopin piece). Through a series of miscommunications, the fake organization becomes real enough: Tom begins performing legitimate work feeding information to British intelligence forces, leading to more romantic byways, confused identities and, as the war draws to a bloody close, a body count. The novel's opening pages seem to suggest a comedy of errors, or at least an unreliable narrator: The narrative is structured as a letter to the editor, written by Tom in frustration with a newsmagazine article’s numerous inaccuracies about Rondo. But Tom’s outrage, constant digressions and shifts in time are designed more to expose dry ironies than get laughs. Brandys regularly underscores the connection between the theater in which Tom and Tola work and the “political theater” in which they participate, giving short shrift to their actual relationship, which eventually feels more like an excuse for the occasional mini-essay about the nature of political dissent. Brandys is deeply concerned about the ways politics and love tend to shape our identities, dourly concluding that both have a way of making us feel isolated. There’s no questioning the intelligence he brings to make that point, though his dense, digressive prose may test readers’ patience.
A challenging but politically and morally astute take on the emotional impact of war.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60945-004-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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