A modern-day epic seesaws uncomfortably between absurdity and banality.
A family saga ranges from contemporary Israel to Egypt to Inquisition-era Spain.
Vivienne leaves her job at the bank early to make it to her wedding on time. “I don’t understand,” says her supervisor, “why didn’t you take the day off?” “No need,” she says. Her husband, Charlie, is one of five Egypt-born brothers. Vita, one of those brothers, “was already married to Adele, who didn’t like the yellow part of the hard-boiled egg, and told everyone in the Egyptian garin—their cohort on the kibbutz—that she’s half-Ashkenazi.” Vivienne doesn’t understand the connection between those two details; all she knows is that, “in the dining hall Adele would always mention these facts together.” Castel-Bloom’s (Dolly City, 2010, etc.) latest novel is full of details like these: banal yet charming, mundane to the point of absurdity. Vivienne and Charlie will have two daughters, referred to only as the Older Daughter and Younger Daughter, while Adele and Vita will have one, the Only Daughter. These daughters eventually have daughters of their own. Castel-Bloom traces their lineage—based on her own—in chapters that switch back and forth in time, ranging as far back as 1492, when one small segment of the Kastil family converts to Christianity in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. Castel-Bloom has a wonderful sense of the absurd; her saga is reminiscent of both Kafka and García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. But her novel ultimately fails to satisfy. In many ways, the work reads more like a collection of linked stories than like a unified novel: characters and situations might be introduced in one chapter only to be dropped in the next. It might be that the balance has been tipped too far toward the banal, with chapters like “The Counter Girl Gets Leverage”—in which Vivienne’s Older Daughter, now middle-aged, becomes interested in the fate of a young convenience store worker—simply going on too long. On the other hand, you’ll want to hear more about that Inquisition.
A modern-day epic seesaws uncomfortably between absurdity and banality.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-94315-022-9
Page Count: 155
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
