MISS BLAINE'S PREFECT AND THE GOLDEN SAMOVAR

Name: MISS BLAINE'S PREFECT AND THE GOLDEN SAMOVAR
Author: Olga Wojtas
ISBN: 978-1-63194-170-2

by Olga Wojtas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2018

Wojtas’ debut is every bit as lighthearted, levelheaded, inventive, hilarious, and altogether enchanting as its heroine, who...

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A middle-aged Edinburgh librarian is sent back to 19th-century Russia with orders to complete an unspecified mission within a single calendar week of a year she can’t determine. Say what?

It’s no wonder that Shona McMonagle styles herself the crème de la crème. Not only does she do yeoman work at the Morningside Library, but as a restless alumna of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, she’s honed such diverse skills as knife throwing and accordion playing. So Miss Blaine, suddenly appearing at the library, has no hesitation in dispatching her to an unnamed Russian town a hundred-something years ago to perform an important task that she’s sure Shona will recognize on her own. Naturally, Shona, whisked over the miles and decades, decides that her brief is to rescue novice socialite Lidia Ivanovna Chrezvychainodlinnoslovsky from the elderly general whom she seems fated to wed and match her instead with Sasha, the beautiful serf and protégé of a thoroughly irritating countess. Shona matter-of-factly accommodates herself to her new identity as Shona Fergusovna, aka Princess Tamsonova, and her own serf, a coachman named Old Vatrushkin who adamantly resists her efforts to raise his consciousness, but still faces several obstacles. Lidia Ivanovna is shy and retiring; she’s never so much as met Sasha; as Shona makes the rounds of the society hostesses most likely to organize parties that might bring them together, the hostesses develop a disconcerting habit of falling down staircases to their deaths; and Lidia Ivanovna turns out to have been on the scene of several of these fatalities. As if that weren’t bad enough, Shona, despite her finely honed research skills, just can’t figure out what year it is.

Wojtas’ debut is every bit as lighthearted, levelheaded, inventive, hilarious, and altogether enchanting as its heroine, who richly deserves another jaunt through time and space.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-63194-170-2

Page Count: 264

Publisher: Felony & Mayhem

Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018

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SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

OR THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE, A DUTY DANCE WITH DEATH (25TH ANNIVERSARY)

by Kurt Vonnegut ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 1969

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Then comes the fire storm and "It is so short and jumbled and jangled" . . . because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre but it is precise jumble and jangle, disconcerting and ultimately devastating.

Pub Date: March 21, 1969

ISBN: 0385312083

Page Count: 232

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969

Categories:

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ISHMAEL

by Daniel Quinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 1992

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Here's the novel that, out of 2500 submissions, won the ecological-minded Turner Tomorrow Award—and caused a mutiny among the judges when it was awarded the $500,000 first prize. Is it that good—or bad? No, but it's certainly unusual, even eccentric, enough to place Quinn (the paperback Dreamer, 1988) on the cult literary map. What's most unusual is that this novel scarcely is one: beneath a thin narrative glaze, it's really a series of Socratic dialogues between man and ape, with the ape as Socrates. The nameless man, who narrates, answers a newspaper ad (``TEACHER seeks pupil...'') that takes him to a shabby office tenanted by a giant gorilla; lo! the ape begins to talk to him telepathically (Quinn's failure to explain this ability is typical of his approach: idea supersedes story). Over several days, the ape, Ishmael, as gruff as his Greek model, drags the man into a new understanding of humanity's place in the world. In a nutshell, Ishmael argues that humanity has evolved two ways of living: There are the ``Leavers,'' or hunter-gatherers (e.g., Bushmen), who live in harmony with the rest of life; and there are the ``Takers'' (our civilization), who arose with the agricultural revolution, aim to conquer the rest of life, and are destroying it in the process. Takers, Ishmael says, have woven a ``story'' to rationalize their conquest; central to this story is the idea that humanity is flawed—e.g., as told in the Bible. But not so, Ishmael proclaims; only the Taker way is flawed: Leavers offer a method for living well in the world. After Ishmael dies of pneumonia, his newly converted pupil can only ponder the ape's parting message: ``WITH GORILLA GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR MAN?'' A washout as a story, with zero emotional punch; but of substantial intellectual appeal as the extensive Q&A passages (despite their wild generalities and smug self-assurance) invariably challenge and provoke: both Socrates and King Kong might be pleased.