A well-written, engaging, sometimes-frustrating tale of reaching adulthood a little late.
In Wilke’s second novel (After The Sucker Punch: A Novel, 2014, etc.), 33-year-old photographer Dan McDowell’s fiancee kicks him out for an old transgression.
Dan and Jane have already set their wedding date when he admits he slept with an ex-girlfriend after he was already seeing Jane. She’s furious, but he doesn’t see the big deal—soon enough, though, he’s occupying a friend’s spare room and mulling over his sister’s suggestion that he and Jane just aren’t “soul mates.” On the other hand, Dan’s father, Jim, tells him to play the hand you’re dealt—“end of story.” Caught between cynicism and idealism, Dan finds inspiration in an old manuscript of his father’s—the story of his meeting beautiful Barbara on the beach 50 years ago only to discover that she was engaged to another. Is this what killed his father’s belief in love? When Jim has a stroke, Dan interprets his repeated cries of “cah...baaa...baaa” as “call Barbara.” Impulsively, he decides to drive to Oakland and track down his father’s lost love, armed only with her first name, a couple of snapshots, and an ancient phone number. While he investigates, he stumbles into an infatuation with gorgeous 23-year-old Fiona, and he starts to wonder whether there’s something to this soul mate thing after all. Wilke is a skilled writer, able to plausibly inhabit Dan’s young male perspective—but for some, this strength may also be a weakness. Dan is a man-child in the modern mode: immature, aimless, self-absorbed, thoughtlessly leaving his sister and mother to deal with the stress of Jim’s illness while he looks up Barbara and dallies with Fiona (a figure of pure wish fulfillment if there ever was one). While he eventually makes some grown-up decisions, they may come too late to satisfy readers glutted with similar finally-coming-of-age tales.
A well-written, engaging, sometimes-frustrating tale of reaching adulthood a little late.Pub Date: March 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5061-7694-9
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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