Despite its lyricism, this odd marriage of spirituality and psychology will be a slog for all but the most devoted New Agers.
In this brief novel, the author of 1992’s Like Water For Chocolate attempts to repair the reputation of one of Mexican history’s most reviled women, the Spanish conqueror Cortés’s native interpreter, Malinalli.
As a child, Malinalli (aka Malinche) is sold by her mother into slavery but retains her beloved grandmother’s belief in the beneficent pre-Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, whose return (second coming?) would mean the end of the Aztec conqueror Montezuma’s practice of human sacrifice. When Cortés arrives, Malinalli believes he is a savior, if not the god himself, and is happy to put her linguistic skills to use as his translator. She becomes known as “The Tongue.” She allows herself to be baptized, entwining Christian doctrine with her own belief system, but, although she finds herself sexually drawn to Cortés, she begins to suspect that he is not to be trusted to save her people. Nevertheless, she remains his translator, following her instinct for survival despite the possibility she may anger her gods. After Malinalli watches Montezuma give up his kingdom because he has faith in Quetzalcoatl’s return, she realizes that Montezuma has experienced a spiritual transformation but has also made a terrible mistake in placing his faith in Cortés. As Cortés consolidates a murderous stranglehold over Mexico, he becomes more monstrous. Finally, Malinalli breaks with him when he requires her to abandon their son in the same way her mother abandoned her. After Cortés marries her off to his captain, she ends up living a happy life and dying a happy death, at one with the gods. Because Esquivel is less interested in fleshing out the plot than in delineating the belief system of the pre-Aztec civilization, everything that happens to Malinalli is swathed in imagery and deep spiritual significance. In contrast, everything Cortés does is explained as the psychological consequences of his childhood experience.
Despite its lyricism, this odd marriage of spirituality and psychology will be a slog for all but the most devoted New Agers.Pub Date: May 2, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-9033-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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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