A disappointment.
A young woman in second-century Rome progresses from pampered aristocrat to Christian martyr in this second novel from Italian screenwriter Ferri (Enchantments, 2005).
Cecilia’s 15th birthday marks her entry into the marriage market, and the headstrong young Roman is not a happy camper. “It was a HORRIBLE birthday,” she tells her diary. Since the early deaths of her siblings, only-child Cecilia has been given the privileges of a male heir. Her doting father Paulus is a Prefect, an important imperial official, while her less affectionate mother, Lucilla, remains in mourning for the babies she lost. Cecilia wants to stay footloose for another year, hanging out with her best friend Lucretia, whose solution to marriage to an older man is taking a lover. Her diary entries, rather than immersing the reader in another time and place, are reminiscent of the writings of a moody contemporary teenager with a difficult mom (Lucilla has become the frenzied disciple of an Egyptian goddess). But it’s the mother who gets her way, and Cecilia is still 15 when she’s married off to rich, handsome Valerian. The marriage quickly turns sour; Cecilia discovers he is two-timing her with the maid. There are potentially dramatic moments here, including the Chariot Games in which Valerian’s jealous brother poisons horses, but Ferri fails to exploit them. She cannot manage transitions. One moment Cecilia and Valerian are engaged in torrid, adversarial love-making, the next Cecilia has had a vision of God’s grace and is groping for “a language like feathers, like embroidery” to describe her newfound Christianity, which leads her to associate with slaves and minister to outcasts. There’s yet another missed opportunity as Ferri passes over Cecilia’s betrayal by that evil brother-in-law; next thing we know, she’s in a cell. There’s little suspense as a magistrate interrogates her and Cecilia, armored now in improbably high-flown rhetoric, stands by her faith and goes serenely to her death.
A disappointment.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-933372-87-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
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
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