More a detailed portrait than a riveting tale of a family caught in the undertow of a fatal obsession.
The fifth from American-born Ragen (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes, 1998, etc.), a resident of Israel for the past 30 years, draws on her childhood to tell the poignant story of Sara, a young girl who also grew up in low-income housing in New York City.
Chains Around the Grass serves as cautionary tale about men who dream big while scanting the blessings they already have, like loving families. Russian-born David Markowitz imagines “fitting in seamlessly. . . . Being a regular guy . . . and American,” which, he thinks, requires his being rich and successful. In 1953, convinced that fulfillment is just around the corner, he sells his small store and buys a yellow cab, to be the first of a fleet. But as Dave begins building his company, he decides the family should move from their house in New Jersey to the cheaper projects in New York. Wife Ruth, elder son Jesse, daughter Sara, and baby Louis, not enthralled with the move, try to adjust. For the first year, life isn’t too bad: the business thrives, the neighbors are friendly. Then a rougher element moves in, Dave is mugged, and, after befriending the mysterious Mr. Hesse, sells the cab and invests the money with Hesse, who claims to be a financial consultant. Instead, he absconds, and Dave dies shortly afterward during minor surgery. As Ruth struggles to hold the family together, six-year-old Sara attends the local Jewish school and finds consolation in religion and education, while Jesse drops out to start a business career—but at 16 is overwhelmed by his responsibilities and breaks down. The family survives, but no one can forget David: the beguiling figure who remains greatly loved even when unwittingly inflicting pain and suffering.
More a detailed portrait than a riveting tale of a family caught in the undertow of a fatal obsession.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2002
ISBN: 1-902881-53-2
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
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