The novel is whimsical, erotic and comic all at the same time, and Ponce de León is revealed as an exuberant, self-indulgent...
The “incredibly old man” of the title is none other than Juan Ponce de León, who (in Siegel’s take) did discover the Fountain of Youth, lived through tumultuous historical times and died in 2006.
The conceit of this novel from Siegel (Who Wrote the Book of Love?, 2005, etc.) is that Ponce de León contacts a writer of indifferent gifts named Lee Siegel to pen his memoirs, for the Spanish explorer hasn’t written anything of note since his last logbook entry in 1513. Siegel takes on the formidable task, meanwhile trying to decide whether de León is fraudulent, authentic or crazy. The narrative is divided into historical sections beginning in 1465 and ending with a coda in 2006. Along the way we become acquainted with the subject’s life: his background as a “converso” (or converted Jew); his being dispatched to the New World in search of the Fountain of Youth; his invention of cigars and rum and discovery of popcorn; his taking on the guise of a priest but later dedicating the first synagogue in Florida; his later years as an actor and land speculator. But he recounts with even greater zest the catalogue of his lovers—and over the course of some 540 years this list is impressive. Starting out with Queen Ysabel la Católica and running into the 20th century, de León whores and debauches his way through some 30 or more lovers. (In later life he makes an alphabetical catalogue he runs through to help him get to sleep at night.) He does point out, however, that he got married only five times, an average of once per century. Throughout the novel, a comic discrepancy exists between de León, who wants to be memorialized in a particular way, and Siegel, who does his best but is constantly subject to de León’s refinements, criticisms and (occasionally) contempt.
The novel is whimsical, erotic and comic all at the same time, and Ponce de León is revealed as an exuberant, self-indulgent and crusty old guy.Pub Date: April 25, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-226-75705-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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