An insider affair, and a shameless plug for the glib set.
A group of sleekly self-absorbed New York women anguish over one-upmanship in the fields of print and fashion—in a trite, superficial debut from editor and New Criterion dance critic Jacobs.
Iris Biddle is in her 40s, divorced (from the old-money Biddles), and a style hound who, in her exquisitely furnished Gramercy Park apartment, creates high-end lampshades for people just like her. Fixated on things, as nearly everyone in this flatfooted novel seems to be, Iris quietly spends her time gluing on branches she has clipped from New York City parks, shopping for precious, costly items, and sneering at sorority sisters who get better seats at Calvin Klein’s fashion show. Lana—who has yet to meet Iris but whose story is related in alternating chapters—is a gutsy, hard-driven woman from Chicago who has needled herself into the perfumed pages of New York magazines. Lana, while not unsympathetic, alienates the reader by the grossly glamorous pusses she’s captivated by, such as beanstalk, frost-headed Sylvie, who competes with her for junk journalism assignments, and Lana’s intimidating and insecure nemesis in dance criticism, Fernanda Levine. These may well be modeled on real people known to Jacobs and her husband, fellow Vanity Fair author of note James Wolcott, but any spell they might therefore cast equally on the reader is far from guaranteed. Their existential conflicts consist, typically, in choosing $275 shoes at Bergdorf’s (“Shoes are like lipstick. . . no matter what is happening in between, your feet and your mouth can always be beautiful”) and stoking one another’s prickly egos while having tea at the Stanhope. Men are eccentric appendages, as in Iris’s case, or clueless bachelors who can’t take the hint that it’s time to get serious, as in Lana’s. This is a world described in labels and surfaces, and the ending arrives with all the momentousness of the next issue of a glossy monthly.
An insider affair, and a shameless plug for the glib set.Pub Date: May 20, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03088-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
