Exciting and accomplished fiction. One looks forward to further translation of Rivas’s work.
This internationally acclaimed 1998 novel—the first of its Galician author’s to appear in English—is an elegantly composed mosaic portrayal of the human cost of the Spanish Civil War.
The story begins many years afterward with a journalist’s visit to interview Dr. Daniel Da Barca, a “revolutionary grandfather” hero of the Republican resistance to (fascist) Falangist tyranny, who has returned to Spain after a long exile in Mexico following his escape from prison. The journalist’s story is joined by other voices remembering—the primary one being that of Falangist stooge and former prison guard Herbal (who’s sharing his memories with a sympathetic prostitute at the whorehouse where he’s now employed as a handyman). Herbal is tormented by accusatory images from his past: specifically, his reluctant murder (under orders) of a (nameless) painter whose drawings had boldly exalted the figures of his fellow prisoners; more generally, the stoical Da Barca’s love for beautiful Marisa Mallo, the granddaughter of a Falangist collaborator—a relationship that endures as a rebuke to the captors who tried to break Da Barca’s spirit. Furthermore, the aforementioned painter’s “carpenter’s pencil,” which Herbal has appropriated, evokes the spirit of the painter, which now “visits” and speaks with the chastened Herbal. Rivas creates a dramatic and fascinating nexus in which these and other vividly realized characters (notably Mother Inane, a fervent nun who angrily debates religion with the freethinking Da Barca) are shown in an increasingly complex interrelationship, also captured in a series of stunningly evocative “pictures” (the dark shape of a wolf against a background of snow, a train full of tubercular prisoners, an “orchestra” of musicians who have no instruments). The result is a deeply moving depiction of heroism and survival, this despite an uneven translation whose frequent awkward phrasing (e.g., “in the jovial manner some of them had been doing”) suggests an overly literal blurring of the differences between Galician and English idiom.
Exciting and accomplished fiction. One looks forward to further translation of Rivas’s work.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58567-145-2
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.
This is a book which courts the dangers of two extremes.
It can be taken not seriously enough or, more likely, critical climate considered, too seriously. Kesey's first novel is narrated by a half-Indian schizophrenic who has withdrawn completely by feigning deaf-muteness. It is set in a mental ward ruled by Big Nurse—a monumental matriarch who keeps her men in line by some highly original disciplinary measures: Nursey doesn't spank, but oh that electric shock treatment! Into the ward swaggers McMurphy, a lusty gambling man with white whales on his shorts and the psychology of unmarried nurses down to a science. He leads the men on to a series of major victories, including the substitution of recent issues of Nugget and Playboy for some dated McCall's. The fatuity of hospital utilitarianism, that alcohol-swathed brand of idiocy responsible for the custom of waking patients from a deep sleep in order to administer barbiturates, is countered by McMurphy's simple, articulate, logic. This is a thoroughly enthralling, brilliantly tempered novel, peopled by at least two unforgettable characters. (Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.)
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1962
ISBN: 0451163966
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1961
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
APPRECIATIONS
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
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