Drager’s novel, though beautiful in its conception, is frequently dense and abstract, perhaps more interested in the nature...
This experimental novel looks at life on Earth from the 14th through the 24th centuries during sightings of Halley’s comet.
In the early 19th century, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are collecting oral folktales to include in what will become their famous fairy tales. They are startled when they learn from a woman a variant of “Hansel and Gretel”; in the version she knows, the children are cast into the woods because Hansel “loves boys.” In this tale, Jacob recognizes himself; the brothers separately wonder if it is their duty to transmit the story: “Jacob will think: What is at stake in sharing this story? And Wilhelm will think: What is at stake in leaving this story untold?” These are the questions that preoccupy Drager (The Lost Daughter Collective, 2017, etc.) in this conceptual, philosophical book. “Hansel and Gretel” becomes a motif drawn through the centuries, beginning with the actual siblings in 1378. The fairy tale symbolizes sibling relationships and difficult tenderness forged within them; it also represents storytelling itself and the power of stories to be a “safe harbor,” especially for those who have been “hurt by coded forms of hate.” In 1986, for example, a gay man dying of AIDS has given his illustrated copy of “Hansel and Gretel” to a lover, whose obituary he spots in the paper shortly after. The queer woman who did those illustrations is committed to an “Asylum for Women” in 1910. In 2211, two space probes beam out the fairy tale in binary code, still relaying their narrative despite the fact that no human is left alive to hear it.
Drager’s novel, though beautiful in its conception, is frequently dense and abstract, perhaps more interested in the nature of storytelling than in the telling of the story itself.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945814-82-2
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Dzanc
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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