Overall, one of the most impressive works of fiction to have ever come out of Africa. A spectacular debut performance.
This briskly paced comic epic recounts in lavishly imagined detail its sly narrator Mugezi’s upbringing in 1960s Uganda, struggles with demands imposed by his sprawling extended family and divided country, and eventual escape to the mixed blessings of sanctuary in Amsterdam.
Isegawa, who is himself now a citizen of the Netherlands (where this debut novel first appeared, in a Dutch translation), has attempted a saga akin to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: an ironical bildungsroman that’s also a full-scale portrayal of a traditional society in flux and in crisis. Mugezi’s tale begins with fetchingly seriocomic vignettes of village life with his father Serenity, a frequently overemotional paranoid autodidact; unloving puritanical mother (whose virga intacta state on her wedding night earned her the nickname “Padlock”); and formidable “Grandpa,” a former prosperous “subcounty chief,” among other lively reality instructors. After his family moves to Kampala, the devoutly Catholic Padlock unloads (her despised eldest) Mugezi on a seminary, itself a disciplinarian microcosm of the nation now ruled by “benevolent” dictator Idi Amin. As Amin’s abuses provoke guerrilla resistance and a debilitating war with Tanzania, plus a legacy of continuing chaos, the resourceful Mugezi lives by his wits as a brilliant student (not above misusing his intelligence for profit), schoolteacher and part-time liquor brewer, black-marketer, and hopeful emigrant who’s chastened to find himself involved in “international beggary, image pillage and necrophilic exploitation.” Not to worry: he’s a survivor—as the rather hurried final one hundred or so pages make clear. Isegawa tells Mugezi’s story with a remarkable combination of panache and keen sociopolitical insight, stumbling only in his tendency to spell out the meaning of his novel’s original and distinctive content (for example, Mugezi’s combative responses to Padlock’s relentless cruelties are too obviously linked to Uganda’s endless sufferings). But the abundance of boldly drawn characters and original narrative inventions make such flaws seem barely worth mentioning.
Overall, one of the most impressive works of fiction to have ever come out of Africa. A spectacular debut performance.Pub Date: June 4, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40613-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
