The warmth and romance of this novel will make cynics smile.
Korean writer Park’s new novel examines the mysteries of attraction and the falsehoods of beauty.
“Write about something pretty,” Park’s narrator, an aspiring writer, hears from a friend—but the narrator lives his life in revolt against the beautiful, having seen how aesthetics wrecked his family when his movie-star father drifted away in favor of glitz. For this reason, perhaps, the 20-year-old narrator finds himself drawn to “the world’s ugliest woman,” a sweet person his own age who works with him. Although ugliness is one of the novel’s themes, Park’s work is anything but. The novel glitters with poetic language (“Her three words, I love you, were [a] blade of grass”), often blanketing the characters in snow, making the novel feel hushed and still—a story told in a whisper late at night while, elsewhere, people try to sleep. Park’s novel has a youthful wisdom that occasionally borders on the pretentious and/or mundane, as youthful wisdom often does. “This world is one big sham,” says a young man named Yohan, the narrator’s friend and the third major character. This idea of sham isn’t an unfamiliar sentiment in novels about young people, but what Park occasionally lacks is a perspective on this sort of philosophizing; does he find it naïve, astute, absurd or what? This is a small complaint, however, about a book that works, more than anything, like music, with the lyrics of specific songs (particularly “Strawberry Fields Forever”) woven through the pages like a soundtrack. (One might recall the films of Wong-Kar Wai—how they often repurpose the same two or three songs in a multitude of situations.) The ending dips too far into metafictional trickery, but the result is an oddly optimistic book about broken hearts.
The warmth and romance of this novel will make cynics smile.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62897-066-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
