A funny, atmospheric exploration of midlife evolution.
A radio engineer finds his life in Cambridge transformed thanks to tree huggers, job politics, and more in this debut novel.
Bob Boland, single, 48, lives in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, home he inherited from his recently deceased blue-collar parents. He works nights as an engineer at a local radio station, supporting a jazz show hosted by similarly aged Rif. He’s also writing an “unwieldy jazz manifesto” about the ways the current generation of players is “killing” jazz. Bob bristles when Abigail, one of the many academic/yuppie neighbors who surround him, asks him to cut down his Norway maples, claiming that they are an invasive species that is killing her arborist-curated trees. When he learns about a group protesting the uprooting of a perhaps ancient Japanese maple due to a condo construction, Bob attends their meeting, thinking he’ll get help for his situation. He is derailed, however, by his attraction to member Leonie Marshall, a Californian teaching dance at Harvard. They soon sleep together but only after Bob refuses Leonie’s request to do so without birth control because the recent divorcée is eager to have a child. The radio station switches Bob to the day shift, and he contends with a new station manager’s mandate to move to an all-news format. Cronin terms her own family “quirky Cantabridgians,” and such flavor infuses this amusing novel set within the Cambridge milieu. Bob’s wry observations of this world are particularly enjoyable, including that city hall workers are “people whose livelihoods depend on keeping their accents.” This character’s feeling stuck also wonderfully culminates with him being literally so near the end of novel. While somewhat overloaded with yuppie stereotypes (there’s also a meditation-guru neighbor, etc.), overall, this is a colorful, comic snapshot of a community—and a character’s serious growth within it.
A funny, atmospheric exploration of midlife evolution.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-941576-22-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gorsky Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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