bookshelf

THIS IS WHY I CAME

Name: THIS IS WHY I CAME
Author: Mary Rakow
ISBN: 978-1-61902-575-2

by Mary Rakow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2015

An affecting flash-fiction reimagining of the Good Book.

bookshelf

A set of revised Bible stories with an eye toward better highlighting the role of women and presenting a God who's as conflicted as those he made in his image.

The second novel by Rakow (The Memory Room, 2002) opens with a woman visiting a confessional for the first time in more than 30 years and bearing a “Bible of her own” filled with brief, often poetic recastings of the Old and New Testaments. The general narrative arcs remain intact in these retellings—Cain slays Abel, a burning bush appears before Moses, Jesus is tempted in the desert, and so forth. But Rakow thoughtfully offers sensitive and complex readings that are free of moral thundering. For instance, the source of Jesus’ temptation is not Satan but Jesus himself, and Noah’s tale is less about the fate of the Earth than of Noah’s own marriage: “his wife and family senseless on the water, the life they had, obliterated.” Nobody is more self-questioning here than God himself, whose mercurial nature is sparked by his need “to be loved not for his power or his omniscience but for his mercy.” Rakow also emphasizes the women in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament stories, including the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene (here one of Jesus’ close confidantes), the “unclean” woman with an issue of blood, and more; the crucifixion is seen largely from the perspective of a young peasant, Veronica. Rakow doesn’t radicalize the Bible—only a hard-liner would take offense at her interpretations—but she does make it more humanistic and poetic; as the endnotes explain, she’s borrowed some lines from Jack Gilbert and Henri Cole. The effect is occasionally overly airy, but she gets credit for using religious language while avoiding familiar sentiment and interpretations.

An affecting flash-fiction reimagining of the Good Book.

Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61902-575-2

Page Count: 204

Publisher: Counterpoint

Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

bookshelf

ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

bookshelf

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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

bookshelf

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

bookshelf

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.