A sweetly pleasing though scarcely satisfying narrative.
Canadian den Hartog’s first novel comes after the American publication of her second (The Perpetual Ending, p. 8) and is again about independent sisters and their pretty but vapid mother bereft of husband.
In lovely if lightweight prose, den Hartog introduces Hannah and Vivian in their own voices as they make their way back to their small hometown three hours from Ottawa. It’s the eve of their mother Darlene’s second marriage to the local shoe-store owner. Long-haired and eternally youthful, Darlene provides a kind of cotton-candy center to the family’s thread of earnest anecdotes, beginning with first husband Mick’s having walked out when the girls were nearly adolescent. A free spirit and lover of nature, Mick was sorely missed by his two daughters and their mother, who never quite got over his departure, though her chronic philandering couldn’t bring him back, either. Still, now, living close by are Darlene’s sister, Angie, solicitous and often spitefully envious, and her ethereal only daughter Wren, born with webbed feet. Den Hartog works by long-winded flashbacks, pursuing over the years the growing into womanhood of the two sisters who are never quite right for the town and can’t wait to leave. Along the way are Darlene’s intermittent new boyfriends (fleshy scientist Uncle Tim, for example, whom the girls hate) and Mick’s untimely death, while Wren, considered a kind of freak, tries to find friendship in the Brownies. Finally, Darlene’s wedding day arrives, signaled by a switch to the present tense, though the stream-of-consciousness remains constant—as if Vivian and Hannah had never grown up and experienced a life of their own. If the point of the story is to get at the reason behind Darlene and Mick’s breakup, it’s a flimsy teaser. While there’s considerable detail throughout, den Hartog’s tidy prose and fleeting surfaces don’t let the reader glean a visceral sense of these characters’ lives.
A sweetly pleasing though scarcely satisfying narrative.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2004
ISBN: 1-931561-61-3
Page Count: 270
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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