A rare delight—stories in stylish prose that do both entertain and move.
Uncharacteristically playful mix of stories from the late Japanese writer Dazai that celebrates quirky families and reinterprets old fairy tales.
Known more for his dark, self-absorbed autobiographical fiction (Self-Portraits, 1991), Dazai was also an innovative stylist who experimented with narrative techniques that would both move and entertain—an ambition more than realized in these pieces, first published in the late 1930's and early 40's in Japan. The first and last—"On Love and Beauty" and "Lanterns of Romance"—are stories-within-stories about a family with literary pretensions through whose veins "flowed an uncommon romanticism." Wealthy, well-educated, and bored, the members while away their tedium by telling serial stories—with each section reflecting the temperament and interests of the respective narrators. In the first story, the five siblings take the confused and intellectually pompous beginning of the youngest son and turn it into a wry tale of an aging professor's illusions of happiness. The last section is an inventive interpretation of Rapunzel, interrupted by descriptions of the family's reactions and comments, especially those of the grandfather, who, "plagued by a certain sense of guilt over his unorthodox behavior, had been making a concerted effort to get on the good side of everyone." The collection's title story is a reworking of an old Chinese legend in which an unhappily married man is shown true love by a magical crow. Other notables here—"The Chrysanthemum Spirit" and "the Mermaid and the Samurai"—are imaginative and gently humorous retellings of old fables in which, respectively, an obsessed gardener finds himself helped by a remarkable family; and death follows when a noble samurai's tale of a malevolent mermaid is not believed.
A rare delight—stories in stylish prose that do both entertain and move.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 4-77001-738-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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