Languid, engaging, inwardly revealing flights of fancy.
A slim volume of mostly anthropomorphic short stories explores the underlying nature of relationships and family.
Though pitched as fables—and bestowed the dreamy quality of such by their substitution of animal for human characters—Robinson’s tales offer less a thou shalt or thou shalt not moral than a wistful, nonjudgmental imparting of experiences gained. The first and longest story in the collection, “Leave Her to Heaven,” breezes through the married life of a purebred Siamese cat and her tabby husband raising an adoptive litter born of the tabby’s one-off infidelity with a Burmese. The message by the tale’s end is not that either cat should have acted differently but rather that parenthood is unpredictable and should be embraced for whatever it brings. Next is “A Raven Named Rubin,” in which a field mouse tries unsuccessfully to nurse an injured raven back to health—at only four pages, the story delivers an aptly fleeting look of how dreams can be stillborn. “The Beginning of Wisdom” features the only human protagonist in the volume, a boy who collects insects in glass bottles. The boy eventually changes his ways—not after suffering a comeuppance but instead from talking with a squirrel and gaining a new, empathetic perspective on the sanctity of life. “Mayor Spare That Tree” is related in theme but relatively uninspiring (unlike the other tales, it gains little from using animal characters). Robinson’s prose is simple but redolent and at its best affords enchanting glimpses of underlying human frailties. “Bridge in the Afternoon” sees an egret spend many contented years playing cards and cultivating the perfect bridge partner only to realize how empty his heart is without a similar partner in life. “The Good the Bad and the Hideous” tells how a chicken and a praying mantis find happiness together. The volume concludes with “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” in which a mallard fails in pursuing her dreams of stardom but finds solace in returning to her sister and foster parents. All told, the author has fashioned an absorbing little collection. Each of the seven tales repays consideration and the stories work well as a series, probing gently and never overstaying their welcome.
Languid, engaging, inwardly revealing flights of fancy.Pub Date: May 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947860-19-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Brandylane Publishers, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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