Crystalline (and enjoyable for it) but ultimately inexpressive work by one of the most intriguing American fiction...
Francis Clemens—Frank—is having an affair with Josephine Felielle—Billy. Both of them are married to other people.
They're both involved with economics professionally, they live in New York, they are attached to their spouses by both conviction and honor, and these spouses are often away. So much for similarities. Otherwise, Frank is a sensualist about clothes and food, Billy a slob whose shoes are taped together and who has nothing in her refrigerator. She's laconic and unsentimental; he's the more unbuttoned of the two. They are, in fact, a sort of Odd Couple—wherein is found a good deal of the charm in these five connected if not quite connecting stories by the ever-interesting Colwin (Happy All The Time, Family Happiness). Until Billy calls a conscience-driven halt to the liaison, they both are happy ("as happy as it is possible to be under those circumstances, which bring the kind of happiness that is devoid of any contentment"). Yet, as Colwin's shading warns early on (and readers may notice that Frank is always the narrator of the morally dubious stories, Billy of the post-sin ones: a sort of stacking of the deck): "It is one of the sobering realizations of adult life that love is often not a propellant...It often seems that the function of romance is to give people something romantic to think about." The stories mean to be anti-romantic, in fact; there's far more snacking that goes on than lovemaking; and at one point, Billy's reactions to her own adultery are balanced-out at "sorrow, guilt, glee, humor, anticipation." The problem is that you don't believe an awful lot of it. Francis comes off as too unconscious, almost brutally level, plumb-lined; while Billy seems to be less a lover than a treader of water, going through the motions of infatuation until she can make for the open sea and have the secure-marriage-with-baby that she's destined for (and does get, post-Frank). Partially this is the overlap's fault—the segments don't seem quite well-aligned enough—but there's also a touch of smugness here that seeps out at the edges of cool delight to Colwin's always truly impressive comic-prose style. Frank seems a strawman set up to then be knocked down; and both Frank and Billy seem to be going through what's finally only a self-restricting acrobatic trick, one of some difficulty but without the sweat. Family Happiness showed Colwin able to approach a Russian-like miscellany of a-directional feeling—and while no one would expect her to duplicate Anna Karenina, it is somewhat surprising to find so little dirt under her authorial nails when dealing with a subject this compromised and unstable.
Crystalline (and enjoyable for it) but ultimately inexpressive work by one of the most intriguing American fiction writers—here coasting.Pub Date: March 31, 1986
ISBN: 0-06-095894-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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