An atmospheric debut, capturing the slow-moving rhythms and ordinary tragedies of Irish country life.
A lovely, moody debut collection examines hardscrabble days in rural Ireland.
In four long stories O’Keeffe brings the reader to the village of Kilkelly and its environs, where love, jealousy and madness underscore the persistent loneliness of country life. Though taking place in the 1950s and ’60s, the tales seem from an age long ago: One young woman delivers milk in a pony-cart, another listens to the wireless. Rural poverty brings with it a kind of isolation that defies time. In the best piece, “Her Black Mantilla,” young orphan Alice is sent to Tarkey’s farm. She’s to help with the milking and also with James, gored by a bull many years ago and left to the quiet of his room. Middle-aged Davie Condon senses something familiar behind the black mantilla covering Alice’s face, something reminiscent of his pregnant Margaret, abandoned and forgotten long ago. As Davie spies on her from across the field, Alice gets strange comfort from James as she washes his shrunken body and listens to his tales of lost love. In “The Postman’s Cottage,” widowed Kate Dillon, returning from her very first trip out of the village, to visit her son in Dublin, shares the train ride with Timmy O’Rourke, nephew of handsome, notorious Eoin, who courted Kate as a young woman. As their train conversation progresses, Kate recalls the details of Eoin’s disappearance; at the time, he was assumed to be a suicide, but now Kate faces the awful truth that he was murdered, and knows who did it. The titular novella spans the 20th century. Young Jack is mesmerized by the short life of Albert Cagney, a WWI veteran who returned shell-shocked from the trenches, killed himself, and thus altered village life. Jack spends some summer weeks with his old Aunt Mary, a spinster still holding on to the memory of her Albert while the rest of the village tries to forget.
An atmospheric debut, capturing the slow-moving rhythms and ordinary tragedies of Irish country life.Pub Date: July 25, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03398-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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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