The novel doesn’t work well as a stand-alone. And reading the prequel is no guarantee that the reader will get it.
Duras’ novel, published in French in 1971, debuts in its English translation (Emily L., 1987, etc.).
The town of S. Thala is a timeless place where sand, light, hot blazes, sirens and a dead dog all seem to hold some strange significance. But what? Duras, whose works were popular in France during the last century, was known for experimenting with different genres—she was particularly associated with the nouveau roman movement in France—and presenting her text in unique forms. A prolific writer, she produced novels, articles, plays and movies before her death in 1996. This particular narrative, written in cinematic form, is illustrative of her passion for the unusual. A sequel to The Ravishing of Lol Stein (first published in 1964), this book revisits the main characters as they fade in and out, and the reader is left to reread passages to discover the identity of the speaker and attempt to discern meaning. As a traveler arrives in S. Thala, he suddenly finds himself confronting his past in surrealistic snatches of dialogue that are simultaneously disturbing, exquisite, calming and perplexing. The traveler evidently was once involved with the woman with whom he interacts—at one point she’s pregnant, and at another, they discuss two children—and she’s sometimes accompanied (and sometimes not) by a man who watches over her. Duras certainly tears down traditional ideas about how to structure novels, but her avant-garde approach may be confusing for some.
The novel doesn’t work well as a stand-alone. And reading the prequel is no guarantee that the reader will get it.Pub Date: July 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-934824-79-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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
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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