Despite a suicide and a near-fatal beating, this is a generally anemic novel from Begley (Shipwreck, 2003, etc.).
The professional success and personal setbacks of a Harvard-educated, Polish-American Jew, as seen by his best friend.
Sam, Archie and Henry arrive at Harvard in the early 1950s; more than half this story describes their comfortable lives there. They are unlikely roommates: Sam and Archie, both Wasps, are intrigued by the exotic Henry, a Jew from Brooklyn with a Polish accent. He arrived in the U.S. with his parents in 1947, after years spent hiding from the Nazis. Though not the most proud Jew, he will acknowledge his Jewish identity, if asked. His brilliant progress at Harvard will be complicated by his pursuit of Margot, the beautiful stranger who had blown kisses at him on his arrival. Narrator Sam has just learned he was adopted at birth and is glad he has no biological links to the “cuckoo couple” who raised him. Curiously, the matter is then dropped. The ensuing lack of attention to Sam’s development throws the novel seriously out of whack (Archie was never more than a bit player). He becomes a successful novelist (just like that!), but stays single. Does he have a sex life? Who knows? The focus stays on Henry, and Henry’s on-again, off-again relationship with Margot, coupled with his attempts to avoid his over-protective, self-dramatizing mother. The story moves sluggishly forward on a tide of social engagements implicitly celebrating money and class. Though he never manages to corral Margot, Henry does very well for himself. As partner in a top New York law firm, he advises a fabulously rich Belgian count, “a bird of prey.” The two fall out over an intricate scheme to protect the Count’s bank, and Henry has a crisis of conscience over betrayal of his Jewish roots. The crisis would have been more convincing had the Count not fired him first.
Despite a suicide and a near-fatal beating, this is a generally anemic novel from Begley (Shipwreck, 2003, etc.).Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2007
ISBN: 0-307-26525-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
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
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