Leisurely pace and authentic southern voice: a pleasure to be savored, by a writer to watch.
A little short on story but impressive nonetheless: a first novel that chronicles the travails and triumphs of a rural North Carolina matriarch and her daughters.
Eighty-two-year-old Marvelle Moon gave birth to ten children and buried five during the hardscrabble years of her long and loving marriage to Jesse. She almost envies him for dying first and yearns to join him in the Hereafter, but she’s not quite ready to quit this earthly life. Her grown daughters, Ruth Ann and Cassandra, worry over Marvelle’s increasing frailty and occasional spells of odd behavior, but they’ve got problems of their own. Ruth Ann’s handsome, cheating ex-husband, A.J., won’t stay away; their teenaged daughter Ashley is pregnant out of wedlock, although the young father, Keith, has vowed to take care of her and the baby. Meanwhile, Cassandra has no man in her life and a lot of regrets about chances she’s missed, but she gets through her days with quiet determination. The Moon women, old and young, are great ones for musing, and Duncan deftly handles multiple points of view as they present their hardships and joys in richly textured reminiscences. Marvelle’s are most evocative of all, and much of the time the past seems more real to her than the present. She wanders away one day, venturing into the alien world of a suburban mall. An encounter with two heavily made-up, scantily dressed girls turns into a screaming match when they don’t take kindly to her opinions of their attire and unsolicited advice. Ashley has to rush to her rescue, and not for the last time. The old lady sorely tries everyone’s patience, but she is unquestionably the heart and soul of the Moon family, keeper of all its history—and all its secrets.
Leisurely pace and authentic southern voice: a pleasure to be savored, by a writer to watch.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-33518-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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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