Writers in exile, remembering home in despair.
An expansive and engaging collection, updated from the original 1994 edition.
Thirty-four voices gathered from an entire continent populate this expanded anthology proving that the art of the story is alive and well in modern Africa. One of the most widely read chroniclers of Africa’s past, Chinua Achebe, provides the adroit foreword but quickly steps out of the way to allow the newer voices to come center stage. Even though certain countries—South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt—dominate the proceedings, the fiction comes from every possible direction. One of the better selections, Ben Okri’s “What the Tapster Saw,” is a brash fever-dream about a man who taps wine from palm trees and has a kaleidoscopic night journey through a landscape peopled with visions, death, and the looming specter of the local oil conglomerate. Like many of the pieces, Okri’s was written in another country; in fact, a depressing number of the authors here seem to have taken writing and teaching positions in Europe and America. They are also predominantly men. One of the few contributions by a woman, Alifa Rifaat’s “At the Time of the Jasmine” (born in Egypt in 1930, Rifaat published most of her work only after her husband died in 1974), is a simple but emotional look into the soul of a conflicted man taking the train to his family’s village for his father’s funeral. Not surprisingly, there’s little presence of joy in these pages—and little humor. As Nadezda Obradovic says in his introduction, “This anthology is not a happy recital any more than Africa today is a happy continent.” Still, there are voices of beauty and snatches of wonder amid the folly and despair. Moroccan Mohammed Berrata’s “A Life in Details” sails out on this sadly noted example: “We return home to write down this life that we are living by well-rationed portions.”
Writers in exile, remembering home in despair.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-72240-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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
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