THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS AND TALES OF THE TROPICAL GOTHIC

Name: THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS AND TALES OF THE TROPICAL GOTHIC
Author: Nick Joaquin
ISBN: 978-0-14-313071-0

by Nick Joaquin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017

Steeped in Filipino history and culture, Joaquin's work is a welcome discovery.

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A collection of short stories and a play by Joaquin (1917-2004), one of the Philippines’ leading writers in English, who finds passion and melodrama in the nation’s colonial and Catholic history.

The first story, “Three Generations,” tells of a young man who defies his father first by choosing the priesthood over a law career and then by reuniting his pining grandfather with a young woman. It hints at the “tropical gothic” of the title but is more conventional than most of the collection. Ghosts, saints, and visions are common as Joaquin (Gotita de Dragon and Other Stories, 2014, etc.) moves among folklore, legend, and even some sci-fi. In “Cándido’s Apocalypse,” a teenage boy alienated from his family and life in general begins to see people without clothing and then without flesh. In an entertaining quasi-mystery that begins with a crucial toothbrush (“The Order of Melkizedek”), siblings’ efforts to rescue their sister from a cult center on a Rasputin-like figure who reappears over many centuries. In “The Summer Solstice,” a religious festival’s wild dancing turns one woman into a sort of a pagan queen in her husband’s bemused eyes. One of the two navels may not exist in the tortuous, episodic title story as it shifts between Hong Kong and Manila and touches on exile, failed revolution, WWII, and Filipinos’ uncommon musical gifts. The play that closes the collection (“A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino”) shows two spinster sisters trying to hold on to a once-vibrant and grand old house. Their survival may depend on selling their father’s final work of art, a painting of Aeneas carrying his father, Anchises, from the ruins of Troy. The drama is rich in themes but rather dreary and heavy-handed.

Steeped in Filipino history and culture, Joaquin's work is a welcome discovery.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-14-313071-0

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Penguin

Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE YELLOW BIRD SINGS

by Jennifer Rosner ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020

A mother and her child-prodigy daughter struggle to survive the Holocaust by telling stories and remembering the power of...

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Rosner’s debut novel is a World War II story with a Room-like twist, one that also deftly examines the ways in which art and imagination can sustain us.

Five-year-old Shira is a prodigy. She hears entire musical passages in her head, which “take shape and pulse through her, quiet at first, then building in intensity and growing louder.” But making sounds is something Shira is not permitted to do. She and her mother, Róża, are Jews who are hiding in a barn in German-occupied Poland. Soldiers have shot Róża’s husband and dragged her parents away, and after a narrow escape, mother and daughter cower in a hayloft day and night, relying on the farmer and his wife to keep them safe from neighbors and passing patrols. The wife sneaks Shira outside for fresh air; the husband visits Róża late at night in the hayloft to exact his price. To keep Shira occupied and quiet the rest of the time, Róża spins tales of a little girl and a yellow bird in an enchanted but silent garden menaced by giants; only the bird is allowed to sing. But when Róża is offered a chance to hide Shira in an orphanage, she must weigh her daughter’s safety against her desire to keep the girl close. Rosner builds the tension as the novel progresses, wisely moving the action out of the barn before the premise grows tired or repetitive. This is a Holocaust novel, but it’s also an effective work of suspense, and Rosner’s understanding of how art plays a role in our lives, even at the worst of times, is impressive.

A mother and her child-prodigy daughter struggle to survive the Holocaust by telling stories and remembering the power of music.

Pub Date: March 3, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-17977-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE DOVEKEEPERS

by Alice Hoffman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2011

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Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.

This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.