First-novelist Dressler tells a largely formulaic tale of a Dutch-Indonesian woman making a new life in California after surviving WW II. When the narrator, twentysomething Marget, a dancer, comes to help out while Gerda, one of her two grandmothers, has knee surgery, she's not entirely motivated by family piety. She's pregnant, the affair with the baby's father is over, and, as is usual in the genre, there are matters of family history to be resolved. Admitting that she comes from a family who ``don't like to name things. . . [who] prefer to keep them folded away in shut drawers,'' Marget soon alerts us to upcoming revelations. Fan and Gerda, her grandmothers, are of mixed Dutch and Indonesian blood, born in Indonesia when it was still a Dutch colony. Only Fan, in actuality, is Marget's blood relative. When the Japanese occupied Indonesia, Gerda, a champion tennis player and the widow of a wealthy businessman, rescued Fan and her baby daughter, Marget's mother, and kept them out of the internment camps by playing tennis for the Japanese. When the Japanese retreated and civil war broke out, Gerda and Fan—by then lovers—and the baby fled first to Singapore, then to Holland. Fan's husband, who'd been a prisoner of war, divorced her, and then the trio immigrated to California. In the days leading up to Gerda's operation, Marget has ample time to reflect on her family's history, to observe how the women have aged, and to ponder her own situation, which she has kept secret from the family. The operation is a success, and she learns a few family secrets from an aunt that only deepen her love for Fan. Armed with the obligatory empowering insight (``the past sometimes makes an answer in the future''), Marget is now ready to have her baby. Luminous prose isn't enough to spark a low-watt story.
Pub Date: May 19, 1997
ISBN: 1-878448-75-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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