Simpson’s (Shirtless in Iceland, 2011) most recent release recounts the sexual awakening of an American abroad in 1920s Paris.
English professor and literary aspirant Cuthbert Westbrook-Madison joins his estranged, expatriate aunt for a summer in Paris where he enjoys the high society his aunt cultivates as her own. Members of this privileged circle are in routine contact with writers and artists such as Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Piet Mondrian. He also befriends the twin children of his aunt’s closest companion, an older Parisienne of noble lineage named Eugenie de Saint-Simon. Her children, Théophile and Irène, are feted in Parisian society for their wealth, good looks and storied histories (one is a widowed Baroness, the other, a war hero). After a falling out with his aunt, Cuthbert moves into the Saint-Simon household. His friendship with the twins permits Cuthbert entry into a world of sexual freedoms and societal vagaries he’s never before experienced. However, he soon discovers the cost for the twins’ competing affections; in the final days of his summer abroad, an unsolved murder leads Cuthbert to suspect betrayals from those he believed to be his friends. The book is fully immersed in 1920s Paris culture; characters, such as Josephine Baker and Hollywood producer King Vidor, even speak in slang. The pursuit of sexual gratification is a recurring theme and scenes can be explicit. While Cuthbert’s sexual awakening for gay love is vividly told, the psychological and emotional ramifications are harder for the reader to discern. Simpson’s characters seem mostly motivated by either sex or power; Cuthbert, for example, is propelled by the promise of pleasure with little control or understanding. Though the characters are engaged in a perpetual struggle to achieve power and physical gratification, the plot is curiously frictionless until tragedy strikes in the final pages and remains mostly unexplained. A detailed account of sexual awakening in 1920s high Parisian society peppered with reflections about the vagaries of sexual love and status that characterized the era, though readers may wish for greater psychological depth.
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466359918
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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