Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin—the amiable, music-loving heroes of O'Brian's wonderful sail-powered series (The Truelove, The Letter of Marque, The Far Side of the World, et al.)—follow orders into the midst of revolutionary South American politics. His Majesty's government has become interested in Peru, where the Spanish vicegerency is tottering and the beastly French seek greater influence. Who better to send to see that, when the old order falls, the new government is Anglophilic than that extremely clever half-Spanish ship's surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin? Maturin, concert-quality cellist, and Captain Jack Aubrey, the best violinist ever to command a man-o'-war, have successfully concluded their business in the South Pacific and are on board Surprise, a privateer. Licensed to steal anything they find in the way of enemy shipping, the duo make it a profitable crossing, taking their biggest haul from the Yankee ship Franklin, which carries, in addition to tons of loot, one Monsieur Dutourd, who says he's just another string-player and utopian disciple of Rousseau but who seems entirely too interested in Peruvian politics. Dutourd presents a problem in that he and Maturin have crossed paths in Paris, and if they land in Lima together, Maturin's identity as a British spy may become known. Along with fretting about Dutourd, Dr. Maturin is concerned about his assistant and fellow naturalist the Rev. Mr. Martin, whose belief that lust in one's heart can result in venereal disease has brought him to death's door. When the sailors at last reach the shores of Peru, Dutourd escapes and Maturin's mission, complicated enough by the various revolutionary factions, becomes a real hair-raiser involving an arduous transit of the Andes, where he is spit on by llamas and sees the great condors. Literate, leisurely, and as charming as the rest of the series. The illustrated guide to sails and masts is worth the price by itself.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03558-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.
Based on an actual incident in Nazi-occupied Belgium, Ramzipoor’s debut is a tragicomic account of fake news for a cause.
Structured like a heist movie, the novel follows several members of a conspiracy in Enghien, Belgium, who have a daring plan. The conspirators do not intend to survive this caper, only to bring some humor—and encouragement for resisters—into the grim existence of Belgians under Nazi rule. To this end, the plotters—among them Marc Aubrion, a journalist and comic; David Spiegelman, an expert forger; Lada Tarcovich, a smuggler and sex worker; and Gamin, a girl masquerading as a male street urchin—intend to...publish a newspaper. And only one issue of a newspaper, to be substituted on one night for the regular evening paper, Le Soir, which has become a mouthpiece for Nazi disinformation. Le Faux Soir, as the changeling paper is appropriately dubbed, will feature satire, doctored photographs making fun of Hitler, and wry requests for a long-overdue Allied invasion. (Target press date: Nov. 11, 1943.) To avoid immediate capture, the Faux Soir staff must act as double agents, convincing (or maybe not) the local Nazi commandant, August Wolff, that they are actually putting out an anti-Allies “propaganda bomb.” The challenge of fleshing out and differentiating so many colorful characters, combined with the sheer logistics of acquiring paper, ink, money, facilities, etc. under the Gestapo’s nose, makes for an excruciatingly slow exposé of how this sausage will be made. The banter here, reminiscent of the better Ocean’s Eleven sequels, keeps the mechanism well oiled, but it is still creaky. A few scenes amply illustrate the brutality of the Occupation, and sexual orientation works its way in: Lada is a lesbian and David, in addition to being a Jew, is gay—August Wolff’s closeted desire may be the only reason David has, so far, escaped the camps. The genuine pathos at the end of this overdetermined rainbow may be worth the wait.
A little-known story that will have special resonance for today’s resisters.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0815-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy.
Two mysterious quests form the core of Murakami’s absorbing seventh novel, whose encyclopedic breadth recalls his earlier successes, A Wild Sheep Chase (1989) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997).
In the first of two parallel narratives, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura drops out of school and leaves the Tokyo home he shares with his artist-sculptor father, to seek the mother and sister who left them when Kafka was four years old. Traveling to the small town of Takamatsu, he spends his days at a free library, reconnects with a resourceful older girl who becomes his de facto mentor, and begins to reenact the details of a mysterious “incident” from more than 60 years ago. In 1944, a group of 16 schoolchildren inexplicably “lost consciousness” during an outing in a rural mountain area. Only one of them, Satoru Nakata, emerged from the incident damaged—and it’s he who, decades later, becomes the story’s second protagonist: a childlike, scarcely articulate, mentally challenged sexagenarian who is supported by a possibly guilty government’s “sub city” and possesses the ability to hold conversations (charmingly funny ones) with cats. With masterly skill and considerable subtlety, Murakami gradually plaits together the experiences and fates of Kafka and Nakata, underscoring their increasingly complex symbolic significance with several dazzling subplots and texts: a paternal prophecy echoing the Oedipus legend (from which Kafka also seeks escape); a faux-biblical occurrence in which things that ought not to be in the skies are raining down from them; the bizarre figures of a whore devoted to Hegel’s philosophy; and an otherworldly pimp whose sartorial affectations cloak his true menacing nature; a ghostly forest into which Russian soldiers inexplicably disappear; and—in glancing allusions to Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki—a clever homage to that author’s beguiling 1905 fantasy, I Am a Cat. Murakami is of course himself an immensely reader-friendly novelist, and never has he offered more enticing fare than this enchantingly inventive tale.
A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4366-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
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