A pleasure to read.
A debut novel from Washington Post Book World editor Arana (American Chica, 2001) that blends magical realism with matter-of-fact descriptions of things Amazonian.
Like the Peruvian poet César Vallejo’s “Black Stone Lying on a White Stone” and the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Peruvian-American Arana’s narrative opens with an intimation of mortality: Its protagonist, the sonorously named Don Victor Sobrevilla Paniagua, foresees his death “in a bustling metropolis, surrounded by doting women.” But first he must find an opposite setting, for Don Victor has an obsession with paper. Thus, in 1913, he treks across the Andes to a place that does not appear on any map, the vegetation-choked hamlet of Floralinda, where he founds a papermaking empire. Mad scientist that he is, Don Victor is not satisfied with paper alone, though his obsession endures: He realizes that one can make paper from any plant, and that bit of occult knowledge informs the rest of his life. Still, his larger ambition is to make something else, even greater than the French engineer Gustave Eiffel’s iron building downriver: “To erect an iron house in the Amazon had been spectacular. To produce cellophane in quantities would be a miracle.” His children—one wild, one bookish, one hauntingly beautiful, all a little odd—tolerate Don Victor’s dream, as does his wife, Mariana, at least to some extent. Where they differ, they do so openly, for over much of the narrative, the people of Floralinda are afflicted with a habit of speaking the truth. (The encounter of the village priest with a supposedly possessed and most worldly woman is a stitch.) All that changes, though, when outsiders arrive, one by one: an Australian adventurer, an American mapmaker and eventually the army, after which Don Victor’s world changes, slipping “from cellophane to official parchment.”
A pleasure to read.Pub Date: June 27, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-33664-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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