The Monty Python veteran’s debut novel is a slight but engaging oddity: an affectionate portrait of a shy and disappointed man who’s obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. Pale, rash-prone Martin Sproale has worked at the Theston post office for the past 16 years. He maintains a chaste flirtation with his colleague Elaine, and is unfailingly polite to the eccentrics and busy-bodies who swarm in on a daily basis. The only question is: When will his boss retire, leaving Martin to ascend to the coveted position of Postmaster? While he waits, Martin comforts himself by nursing his quasi-secret obsession: He devours biographies of his hero, savors trivia, packs his room with Hemingway memorabilia. But Martin’s staid routine gets shaken. His professional ambitions are dashed when a young man from central headquarters is sent to manage his post office. And another Hemingway enthusiast arrives in his somnolent seaside town: Ruth Kohler, on sabbatical from a New Jersey university, is holed up at a local farmhouse, writing a book about Hemingway’s women. The work situation rapidly degenerates: The new boss is keen on modernization, and indifferent to the role that the post office has traditionally played in the community. Longtime clerks are fired, computers are installed, finally the office itself is moved out of its grand headquarters and into the back room of a candy shop. Martin’s only consolation is the attractive scholar: The two of them drink grappa, argue over the relative merits of the master’s works, and get down to some serious flirtation. Egged on by Ruth, Martin attempts to organize resistance to the post office changes, and is unceremoniously fired. Boozy rampages, manic schemes, and some self-discovery ensue as the timid postal clerk gets in touch with his inner Ernest. The pairing of gentle satire and dead-on description of raw human pain is a bit disconcerting, but in all, Palin offers a lively, if slight, ride to nowhere in particular. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 25, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18593-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
A curious fusion of the predictable and the unconventional which, given the appetite for Paris, love, and wartime tragedy,...
While a timid French music teacher grieves the death of her partner, outside, on the streets of Paris, his ghost lingers, lending historical context and soulful musings to a story of unresolved anguish and late love.
Chaudhry’s elegant debut rests on an unusual and risky premise: It is narrated in part by a soul in limbo. Julien Dalsace has died before the story opens, and his old-fashioned voice sets the scene: “The scent of lilacs on the breeze stirs dormant phantoms to life, but music is sorcery more potent.” We are in Paris in the year of the bicentennial, 1989, observing, like Julien, the struggles of his surviving partner, Sylvie, to cope with her loss. Julien, although spectral, is the novel’s lynchpin. The romance between him—an older, upper-class, married Jewish psychologist—and the quiveringly sensitive piano teacher is the beating heart of the story. But there’s another thread, taking the reader back to 1942, when the Jews of Paris were rounded up and deported, including Julien’s sister, Clara, and her twin daughters. Julien never forgave himself for his absence in London during World War II and his failure to save Clara, but a secret folder that emerges after his death offers Sylvie the opportunity to conclude his quest to discover the fate of Clara’s girls. Julien’s curious perspective—on history, on other ghosts, on the beauty but complexity of France generally and the Île Saint-Louis, his corner of Paris, in particular—is the novel’s most original aspect. Elsewhere, while Chaudhry brings a kind of reverent seriousness to events both past and present, her approach is more familiar. Characters are often simple, like the kindly Jewish baker, the protective (but kindly) concierge, the sympathetic American lodgers, and even Sylvie’s anthropomorphized terrier, Coco. And resolutions, even sad ones, arrive with coincidence and ease.
A curious fusion of the predictable and the unconventional which, given the appetite for Paris, love, and wartime tragedy, might well touch a popular nerve.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54460-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
A short, elegant tale about female desire and societal expectations.
An aspiring writer finds a way to live the life she’s always wanted.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”—and that sentiment echoes through Cain’s (Creature, 2013, etc.) debut novel. The protagonist, Vitória, a young and bright museum cleaning woman, spends her days dreaming about writing. In the moments between scrubbing toilets and floors, she writes descriptions of paintings and notices the world around her. Soon she is plucked from her life by a rich husband and placed into another. Her new life is complete with a large house, a personal study, and a maid, who serves as a constant reminder of her own upward social mobility. Despite her good fortune, Vitória is unhappy. At one point, Vitória wonders about her good luck and how she was “saved” from a wholly different life. She writes about a glue factory where women work and horses are sacrificed: “We should memorialize the horses, remember them truthfully, and the women who have to spend their days in that way....I have benefited from a woman who never stops working, walking back from the factory in the morning and the night.” She recognizes the sacrifices women make and, more importantly, the ones she no longer has to make. Deeply rooted in the literary tradition, the novel inconspicuously references works like Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Octavia Butler’s Kindred and explores themes like class and gender. With its short, spare sentences, Cain’s writing seems simple on the surface—but it is deeply observant of the human condition, female friendships, and art.
A short, elegant tale about female desire and societal expectations.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-14837-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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