Clumsy as rallying cries go but otherwise a graceful vision of a slower, more emotionally in-touch way of life.
A writer ponders the sustainability of both her relationships and the environment in this autobiographical novel-in-diary-entries.
The narrator of this novel by an Icelandic poet and occasional Björk collaborator is dating an ornithologist, nicknamed Birdy, and is close to her brother, an archaeologist named Owlie. Convenient gigs, given that her chief concerns in this book are love, nature, and history, which she explores during her hiking and camping trips through Iceland as well as during brief detours to England and France. She goes bird-watching on a beach; ponders settling down and having kids in Reykjavik; visits ancient settlements, gravesites, and museums; explores the profundity of Snoop Dogg’s lyrics; and generally contemplates the meaning of home. (“A place of experimentation and discovery...where the most natural in each individual can be developed.”) At her best, these ramblings suggest a modern-day Walden, in which a writer communes with the environment to better contemplate the complexities of being. She quotes other writers often (including Thoreau): visiting William Wordsworth’s home, for instance, she’s moved to ask, “Why not renew Romanticism, re-clarify the relationship between creation and memory?” Left to her own devices, though, her musings sometimes drift into freshman-dorm–ish philosophizing. (“No, not back to nature, but forward! Forward to nature!” “I think that farmers should be psychoanalyzed, and rethink their connections with the earth and masculinity.”) Yet there’s something admirably consistent about her vision of stewardship—of life, of relationships, of land—that makes her political naiveté forgivable. When she writes about the charm and beauty of the places she visits, you want to pitch a tent right alongside her.
Clumsy as rallying cries go but otherwise a graceful vision of a slower, more emotionally in-touch way of life.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 9781632060747
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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