Devastatingly powerful scenes trapped in a rickety plot.
An unflinching look at sexual abuse from an author who isn’t afraid of difficult subjects.
When Bobbie ran away from home at 15, she intended to go back—as soon as the man who was molesting her moved out of her widowed mother’s house. Then Bobbie’s mom married Bobbie’s rapist, and Bobbie just kept running. Thirty years later, she returns to Maryland for one reason: to bring charges against the man who abused her. Having written popular novels about autism (Daniel Isn’t Talking, 2006) and early death (Dying Young, 1989), Leimbach is no stranger to tough topics. As she shifts back and forth in time—alternating between 1978 and 2008—she offers a horribly believable depiction of a child ensnared by a predator. In giving a voice to Bobbie’s mother as well as Bobbie, she foregoes the urge to simply blame a woman who failed to protect her daughter. However, this novel isn’t quite as deft as some of the writer’s other work. At several critical points, the plot depends on coincidence and actions that strain credulity. For example, on Bobbie's first night back in Maryland, as she’s waiting to testify against her abuser, her mother shows up at the isolated guesthouse where she's staying. Not only does her mother—and, most likely, her mother’s husband—know where she is, but Bobbie also has reason to suspect that her mother got word of her whereabouts from the innkeeper. Bobbie doesn’t even consider finding other, safer accommodations. This rather astonishing lapse in judgment only makes sense in that it’s necessary for setting up a climactic scene. Some readers may admire the way in which Leimbach essentially abandons the court case that provides her story’s scaffolding—the criminal justice system doesn’t always provide a satisfying conclusion—while others are likely to find that the author has broken a narrative contract.
Devastatingly powerful scenes trapped in a rickety plot.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-54087-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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