An ambitious first novel that suffers from the same ennui as do its characters.
An unhappy marriage implodes when demons from the couple's past and the surprise arrival of the wife’s pregnant sister upset the tenuous rhythms of family life.
In their 30s, Katie and Wilson have thousands of dollars of debt and seven degrees between them; they met in Kalamazoo in a Ph.D. program where they were enrolled because both “found it easier to start yet another program than to find a job.” Katie has no ambitions to apply her degree; after graduation, she's isolated inside a small condo with two children from her marriage to Wilson and a son from another relationship. Bored and passing time until her husband finishes his dissertation, "The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath," she has an affair with her neighbor Steven, a wealthy, much-younger community college student with a jealous fiancee. Katie believes her true self was lost as a child when she was repeatedly raped by a man at the edges of her father’s social circle. Scenes of Katie with her monstrous abuser are compelling but heighten the novel’s unevenness. A wickedly funny neurotic and sober alcoholic, Wilson writes the first three words of his dissertation—but despite showing up at his desk every day, nothing more. He falls into new forms of addiction, abandoning school so he can sell cars to feed a heroin habit. The novel’s nearly 400 pages are slow to launch. Katie’s sister, January, doesn't appear until almost a quarter of the way into the saga; her sections have a fresher, more consistent tone. A free spirit who left home with her mother’s blessing at 15, Jan romanticizes the three years she spent as the adoring girlfriend of a self-involved musician who dumped her when he became a rock star. He’s still touring the country while she has lived alone for 20 years in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico in a house paid for by his fame. Although she hasn't been in touch with Katie or Wilson since skipping their wedding, January shows up unannounced in Michigan, determined to learn how to be a mother by installing herself in her sister's world.
An ambitious first novel that suffers from the same ennui as do its characters.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-87580-725-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Switchgrass Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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
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