A simple and heartfelt account that conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and...
A finely crafted debut looks back to a young woman’s harshly beautiful childhood in rural Canada.
In Ontario, as in the whole of Canada, civilization disappears pretty quickly as you head any great distance north—and Crow Lake is very far north indeed, part of a region that was settled in the first place only because the government gave the land away for free. The Morrisons are fairly recent arrivals compared to their neighbors, and Robert Morrison moves there to work at the local bank rather than till the land. But his four children—Luke, Matt, Kate, and Bo—become homesteaders of necessity when both their parents are killed in an automobile crash. The eldest, Luke, passes up his college scholarship to stay home and help raise the family. He is particularly determined that his younger and far smarter brother Matt finish high school and win a scholarship, but Matt is more interested in working the farm than earning a degree. It is Kate, the narrator, who goes to college, eventually becoming a professor of zoology in Toronto. Unusually sensitive and emotionally fragile, Kate grew up in awe of Matt and came to share his fascination with pond life and biology. As an adult, however, she feels increasingly distant—from Matt (whom she now pities for having passed up an academic future), from her boyfriend and colleague Daniel, from her students, and from life in general. Is this just an early onset of midlife malaise? Or is there some unfinished business from the past that she needs to tend to? As she prepares to bring Daniel to visit Matt and his family, now living in what was once her childhood home, Kate finds herself in a state of quiet fear. Is it regret for the past? Or a dread of her future?
A simple and heartfelt account that conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret.Pub Date: March 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-33611-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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