THE POLYGLOT LOVERS

Name: THE POLYGLOT LOVERS
Author: Lina Wolff
ISBN: 978-1-911508-44-1

by Lina Wolff ; translated by Saskia Vogel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019

Wolff’s book is smart, funny, and sad in turns, but the point it’s making—and it seems to be trying very hard to make a...

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A burned manuscript occasions these tales from three distinct characters.

“You’ve never seen anyone,” Max’s ex-wife tells him. “You’ve only seen yourself, and the women you’ve had have only been mirrors in which you saw your own reflection.” This insight arrives near the end of Swedish author Wolff’s (Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, 2016) second novel. It’s a strange, disjointed book. After Max completes a manuscript (which bears the same title as Wolff’s), he entrusts the only copy to literary critic Ruben, who has devoted his life to the study of Max’s work. But that turns out to be a risky place; Ellinor, a woman who met Ruben online and then moved into his house, finds the manuscript and lights it on fire. Lest this all sound too straightforward, keep in mind that the plot is told backward and, as it were, from the side: The novel is split into three sections, narrated by three different characters in reverse chronological order. It begins with Ellinor’s description of her own sexual history and continues in the second section with Max—a hateful character straight out of a Michel Houellebecq novel. In fact, Wolff seems to be parodying Houellebecq, or at least hanging him out to dry. But in an abrupt shift of mood and tone, the novel’s third section leaves Stockholm for Italy, and this is where the novel is at its most vivid. Lucrezia narrates here: Granddaughter of Rome’s very last marchesa, Lucrezia is responsible for her family’s crumbling estate—the place, as it happens, where Max wrote his ill-fated manuscript. Lucrezia describes the circumstances in which he wrote it. Whether any of this comes together in the end is anyone’s guess. Wolff’s prose is whip-smart and deliciously cynical about Max, Michel Houellebecq, and men like them—but you still have to spend a lot of time in their company.

Wolff’s book is smart, funny, and sad in turns, but the point it’s making—and it seems to be trying very hard to make a point—isn’t always in view.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-911508-44-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: & Other Stories

Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MANY PEOPLE DIE LIKE YOU
by Lina Wolff ; translated by Saskia Vogel

- BOOK REVIEW
BRET EASTON ELLIS AND THE OTHER DOGS
by Lina Wolff ; translated by Frank Perry

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.