An impassioned allegory with a thin narrative.
A collection of short stories about unity, cooperation, and the sanctity of the natural world.
Murphy’s debut publication includes five interrelated pieces of fiction; all consider the challenges of maintaining harmonious societies. Some, such as an imagined explanation of the infamous 1908 Tunguska explosion, are based loosely on historical events, while others visit unnamed, archetypal cities and villages. A wise, holy man named Hadar serves as a voice of reason in each of the troubled communities Murphy describes. From helping resolve religious differences to encouraging scientific progress in a reactionary society, Hadar repeatedly preaches gospels of peace and tolerance. Epigraphs from the eco-theologian Thomas Berry suggest that the work may have been inspired by his writings, although Murphy offers no explicit context for the tales. Themes about the natural world reign: “How could anyone own the rivers, oceans, and skies? Were not these gifts from Mother Earth for all to share?” In keeping with that removed, somewhat biblical tone, each story reads as a pointed allegory, almost entirely lacking in plot and character development. Murphy’s characters seem to exist only to make metaphorical points, with all of their words and actions tailored to the story’s theme rather than their own motivations. The dialogue, especially Hadar’s, is often trite: “Allow your beliefs to match your greatest hopes and wisdom,” he implores one capital city, “and not your worse fears and intolerances.” As a work of literary fiction, Murphy’s collection emphasizes message over storytelling. As a solely spiritual text, however, it’s more successful. While most of the values Hadar promotes are familiar, Murphy successfully articulates them and offers the occasional thought-provoking perspective, as when Hadar asks: “Are not a person’s beliefs much like a fingerprint?” Whether as an ongoing source of inspiration or a starting point for further study, these tales may prove meaningful to readers inclined toward spiritual exploration.
An impassioned allegory with a thin narrative.Pub Date: April 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499005776
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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