A technically uneven novel from a skilled and promising writer.
A debut novel about new motherhood and political unrest from the editor of the online literary magazine The Millions.
Daphne has a beautiful baby girl and an amazing job at the Al-Ihsan Foundation in San Francisco. She also has a husband who is stranded half a world away because of an unfortunate—and seemingly irresolvable—issue with U.S. Immigration. One day, the pressure of juggling these irreconcilable realities becomes a bit too much, so Daphne puts her daughter, Honey, in the car seat and heads for the wilds of Altavista, California. This is her mother’s hometown, and, after her mother’s death, Daphne became the owner of her grandparents’ trailer. In a narrative that takes place over 10 days, Kiesling offers a painfully honest portrait of motherhood and offers glimpses of a California that few ever see—or even know exists. Life with a new baby is an underexplored topic in American literature. One of the only authors who comes to mind is Lydia Davis. Kiesling is similarly honest about this strange, disorienting time, but, where Davis is a master of microfiction, Kiesling covers this territory in exhaustive—and, frankly, exhausting—detail. On the one hand, this feels like a public service; on the other hand, anyone who has lived through this experience might not want to revisit it. The depiction of Eastern California—a land of cattle ranchers and desert, far, far away from the ocean and Hollywood—is both depressing and fascinating. Like so many American places, Altavista has seen better days. Resentment is a boom industry. The fact that Daphne is descended from a long-established family is offset by the fact that her husband is Turkish. There’s even a group of secessionists, and the novel takes an unexpected turn when Daphne becomes embroiled in their revolution. This plot shift feels quite timely, but it also feels like it belongs to another book. Kiesling is a talented author, though, with a unique voice. She’s very smart, very funny, and wonderfully empathetic.
A technically uneven novel from a skilled and promising writer.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-16483-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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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