An austerely modern reworking of The Thousand and One Nights — the most magical work yet set into English by Egyptian Nobel laureate Mahfouz (The Harafish, 1994, etc.). Although these intertwined fables are, like the volume that inspired them, set in the past, they deal with all-too-modern consequences of fairy-tale adventures. In "Nur Al-Din and Dunyazad," peerless storyteller Shahrzad's sister dreams of the perfume seller and wakens to find herself pregnant by him, with all the contemporary burdens of unwanted pregnancy. In "Sanaan al-Gamali," a merchant, purchasing his life from a genie he has crossed, is ordered to kill the corrupt governor; but when Sanaan goes to see him, the governor, every inch the modern wheeler-dealer, asks if he can marry Sanaan's daughter, offers his own daughter as a bride for Sanaan's son, and announces his plan to sign an enormous contract with one of Sanaan's relatives. In "The Cap of Invisibility," a righteous man accepts a magical gift on the condition that he be allowed to do "anything except what [his] conscience dictates"; he then faces moral dilemmas the original Arabian Nights never dreamed of. This is a world of endless transformations: A buried girl is brought back to life; after being executed, a governor is reincarnated as a porter and finds himself wooing his own wife; a sultan passes into an otherworldly domain of love and bliss in which he can't remain. The only certainties are the cruel whims of the genies ("The best would be if she were to be killed, and her father were to commit suicide," muses one of them) and the ritual executions of corrupt governors, private secretaries, chiefs of police. The obvious comparison in English is John Barth's Chimera — but Mahfouz's greater faith in old-fashioned narrative allows him to weave modernist psychology and legendary rhetoric, making his Arabian Nights both disturbing and spellbinding.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-46888-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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