A long-ago world comes fully alive in this richly imagined tale.
In this debut Neolithic novel, a cave-dwelling boy’s life utterly changes when he’s kidnapped by obsidian traders and taken to a bustling urban center.
Born in 6350 B.C.E. in what’s now northern Turkey, Tulirane, called Tuli, is 7 years old and lives with his small family group in a sheltered cave. After an especially severe winter, the tribe faces famine. Usually ignored, Tuli becomes a hero when he discovers a hibernating bear, whose meat saves the tribe and their relatives from starving to death. Later that summer, Tuli is allowed for the first time to join the clan when it moves south, seeing new sights, meeting new people, and hearing of new dangers, like raiders who kidnap women. And Tuli at last learns the story of his father, a northern stranger named Rane, who was searching for a holy man to the south (perhaps, it’s hinted, Zarathustra himself). Tulirane (or “Light of Rane”) inherited his father’s height, blue eyes, fair skin, and golden hair, making him stand out among the swarthier, shorter peoples of the Anatolian plateau. Searching for obsidian one day, Tuli is kidnapped by raiders who think he’s a girl. When his captor, Makros, discovers otherwise, he’s not dismayed; instead, he begins working on a scheme to use Tuli for a power grab in his home, Bhelsakros (the tale’s name for Çatalhöyük, one of the world’s first cities). Biding his time, Makros houses his new slave with a kind master obsidian crafter, Urik. Though Bhelsakros is bewilderingly strange, with its bustle, noise, stench, and strange customs, Tuli settles in and learns to craft perfect, long obsidian points, an art he finds deeply compelling. After several years, Makros’ plans come to fruition—plans that will involve Tuli in a secret ritual, a conflict between warriors and priests, and the dawning of a new age in Anatolia. In her intelligent and absorbing novel, scholar Settegast (When Zarathustra Spoke, 2005, etc.) writes of a time when the Near East was in flux. Hunting and gathering, nomadic pastoralism, and proto-urban living were all practiced in Turkey circa 6400 B.C.E. This cultural complexity, together with the religious and political disputes of the time, gives full flavor to Tuli’s story. At times, Tuli can sound overly academic or stiff, but that’s a small matter. Observant and sensitive, the boy is an engaging narrator, and his descriptions of life and work 8,000 years ago are captivating: how to kill a bear with no more than a wooden mallet and some smoldering pine branches; the difference between obsidian worked with a stone hammer and with an antler punch; how to navigate a city that has no streets or alleyways by rooftop and ladder. The author illuminates ideas, such as the differences between wild and pastoral, in ways that are thought-provoking but still part of the story. The suspenseful conclusion has an unexpected and satisfying resolution—one that may leave readers hoping for a sequel.
A long-ago world comes fully alive in this richly imagined tale.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73241-220-0
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Rotenberg Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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