Ardent dog lovers will be inspired by Morie’s dedication, but neither the story nor the prose is compelling enough to reach...
Journalist/novelist Sherrill (The Ruins of California, 2006, etc.) chronicles a man’s quest to save a nearly extinct native Japanese dog.
One of the earliest known species, Akita hunting dogs have long been revered in Japan as cornerstones of national culture, symbols of loyalty and pride. In the years following World War I, when Morie Sawataishi was growing up in the remote snow country, Akitas were plentiful. By the final years of World War II, as the navy veteran returned to the snow country with his young wife, Kitako, he found the breed nearly gone; Akitas had been trapped and killed for fur to line the officers’ uniforms. Morie was in the tiny village of Hachimantai to supervise the construction of hydroelectric plants for Mitsubishi. Life there was rustic and isolated. Kitako worked most of the day just keeping the fire stoked and the rice cooking; she longed for her family in Tokyo. Far from a doctor, the couple lost two of their six children to illness. But from the moment he acquired his first Akita in 1944, Morie’s primary attention was devoted to his dogs. Over the years, he raised hundreds of Akitas, lavishing them with rare affection and tender care. Among the most notable were Three Good Lucks, who won countless dog shows, and Homan, who fathered generations of puppies. Morie’s breeding, along with that of fellow enthusiasts, bolstered the population and made them popular again. Along with the dogs came a series of colorful characters, including a nomadic hunter who bonded with the couple and an Akita-obsessed X-ray technician who became Morie’s favorite trainer. As the century progressed, the snow country became more civilized, getting a hospital, electricity and high-speed trains, much to Kitako’s delight. But having spent a lifetime with Morie and the dogs, she had also begun to appreciate the value of the land and of the animals her husband helped to protect. Sherrill presents an interesting slice of life, but her writing is simplistic and her plotting lacks focus.
Ardent dog lovers will be inspired by Morie’s dedication, but neither the story nor the prose is compelling enough to reach beyond this specific audience.Pub Date: March 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59420-124-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered...
The inspirational and ultimately redemptive story of a teenage girl’s descent into hell, framed as a parable of faith.
The disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002 made national headlines, turning an entire country into a search party; it seemed like something of a miracle when she reappeared, rescued almost by happenstance, nine months later. As the author suggests, it was something of a mystery that her ordeal lasted that long, since there were many times when she was close to being discovered. Her captors, a self-proclaimed religious prophet whose sacraments included alcohol, pornography and promiscuous sex, and his wife and accomplice, jealous of this “second wife” he had taken, weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. In fact, his master plan was for similar kidnappings to give him seven wives in all, though Elizabeth’s abduction was the only successful one. She didn’t write her account for another nine years, at which point she had a more mature perspective on the ordeal, and with what one suspects was considerable assistance from co-author Stewart, who helps frame her story and fill in some gaps. Though the account thankfully spares readers the graphic details, Smart tells of the abuse and degradation she suffered, of the fear for her family’s safety that kept her from escaping and of the faith that fueled her determination to survive. “Anyone who suggests that I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome by developing any feelings of sympathy for my captors simply has no idea what was going on inside my head,” she writes. “I never once—not for a single moment—developed a shred of affection or empathy for either of them….The only thing there ever was was fear.”
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered rather than how she recovered.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-04015-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
A captivating, redemptive chronicle of a year in which Smith looked intently into the abyss.
This chronicle of a chaotic year filled with deep losses and rich epiphanies finds the writer and performer covering a whole lot of ground.
In terms of the calendar, Smith’s latest memoir has a tighter focus than its predecessors, M Train (2015) and Just Kids (2010), which won the National Book Award. The titular year is 2016, a year that would begin just after the author turned 69 and end with her turning 70. That year, Smith endured the death of her beloved friend Sandy Pearlman, the music producer and manager with whom she would “have coffee at Caffé Trieste, peruse the shelves of City Lights Bookstore and drive back and forth across the Golden Gate listening to the Doors and Wagner and the Grateful Dead”; and the decline of her lifelong friend and kindred spirit Sam Shepard. She held vigil for Pearlman at his hospital deathbed, and she helped Shepard revise his final manuscript, taking dictation when he could no longer type. Throughout, the author ponders time and mortality—no surprise considering her milestone birthday and the experience of losing friends who have meant so much to her. She stresses the importance of memory and the timeless nature of a person’s spirit (her late husband remains very much alive in these pages as well). Seeing her own reflection, she thinks, “I noticed I looked young and old simultaneously.” She refers to herself as the “poet detective,” and this particular year set her on a quixotic quest, with a mysterious companion unexpectedly reappearing amid a backdrop of rock touring, lecture touring, vagabond traveling, and a poisonous political landscape. “I was still moving within an atmosphere of artificial brightness with corrosive edges,” she writes, “the hyperreality of a polarizing pre-election mudslide, an avalanche of toxicity infiltrating every outpost.”
A captivating, redemptive chronicle of a year in which Smith looked intently into the abyss.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-65768-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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