Filled with insight into Southern California, the novel ultimately devolves in a quest for individuality narrated by an...
A novel about one man’s coming-of-age in Southern California from debut author Miller.
Jake Reed is a young man who wonders where exactly his life is headed. Bored with his job running social media for a real estate firm, Jake decides to head out on his own to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. A writer, he feels, needs life experience. And life experience is exactly what he plans on getting as he explores West Hollywood and Manhattan Beach. Though his journey doesn’t take him far from Los Angeles County (save for a business trip to New Jersey), Jake encounters a variety of people. Befriending drug addicts, a reality show actor, immigrants, easy women and an elderly gentleman who lives in a hotel, Jake encounters a wide swath of characters as he enjoys (or fails to enjoy) sex, drugs and Facebook. With his laptop at the ready, his writing often becomes sporadic, though his dream always remains focused. Jake will become a writer, and he will do it in California. Miller skillfully depicts Southern California’s nuances. How different could West Hollywood and Manhattan Beach be, the uninitiated reader may wonder? Full of cultural details answering such questions, Jake’s journey has its moments of interest, even if Jake himself often does not. Overjoyed by vinyl records and encounters with authenticity (such as when Jake visits a Greek restaurant, orders a Greek beer, and the cheerful counterperson points out, “You’re the first non-Greek around here to ask for a Greek beer”), Jake can come across as simple but good-natured. In spite of his adventures, however, he remains largely unchanged. Many readers will likely sympathize with Jake and his dreams, though few are likely to find those dreams compelling, particularly when his ambitions are forestalled by unoriginal, small-scale debauchery.
Filled with insight into Southern California, the novel ultimately devolves in a quest for individuality narrated by an uninspiring individual.Pub Date: June 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0983896111
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Fernando French Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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