Auster (Leviathan, 1992, etc.) departs from his usual cerebral fiction for this quick trip into Doctorow Land — a mytho-historical tale that invokes the American '20s, complete with glamorous gangsters and legendary sports stars. Writing in his anec-dotage, the septuagenarian Waiter Rawley recalls his moment of fame back in his youth when he toured the country as "Walter the Wonder Boy," a freckle-faced bumpkin who could walk through the air. Walter's levitations were no sham, but a carefully nurtured talent developed by the mysterious Master Yehudi, a Hungarian Jewish impresario who discovered Walter on the streets of St. Louis at age nine. "A pus-brained ragamuffin from honky-tonk row," the orphaned Walter eventually submits to Yehudi's grueling regimen. Yehudi's household on the Kansas prairie harbors other outcasts also: Mother Sue, a stout Sioux who once performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; and Aesop, a precocious crippled black foundling admitted to Yale. Yehudi and Walter finally take their show on the road after their house is visited by the KKK, who lynch Mother Sue and Aesop. Walter's fame grows rapidly. "In the arms of the great ambient nothingness," he floats above ground, astounding audiences from coast to coast. His career is interrupted by a ghost from his past, a mean-spirited uncle who wants some of the loot. Then disaster strikes: The onset of puberty destroys his gift. Life after that is never the same. Yehudi shoots himself. Walter becomes a gangster in Chicago; develops a bizarre obsession with the great pitcher Dizzy Dean; and slowly fades away into alcoholic obscurity before recovering and writing this tale. Despite intimations of allegory and parable, Auster's dizzying trip through the century is not nearly as dimensional as Moon Palace, his previous escape from the metaphysical rigors of his shorter works into the picaresque. Disappointing.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0140231900
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
A bold attempt, nevertheless, by a gifted writer whose own future looms promisingly indeed.
A compelling protagonist and a lyrical style grounded in precise observation of the physical world: these are the hallmarks of Idaho author Doerr’s complex, ambitious first novel.
As in the stories of his highly praised debut (The Shell Collector, 2002), Doerr explores the tensions between scientific objectivity and emotional vulnerability—here in the story of David Winkler, a trained hydrologist whose understanding of predictability in natural process is unsettled by mysteries that unfold from his own nature. For David experiences prophetic dreams of mischance occurring in both humdrum and catastrophic forms. We first meet him on an airplane when, at age 59, he’s returning to the US from 25 years of self-exile and servitude in the Caribbean Grenadine Islands. Working through extended flashbacks that comprise most of the text here, Doerr patiently fills in the blanks. Growing up a scholarly, solitary youth in Anchorage, Alaska, David “dreamed” his chance meeting with the woman he would wed—then, finding her unhappily married, persuaded her to accompany him to a new life in Ohio. Fathering a daughter (Grace), then dreaming the flood in which he himself accidentally drowns her, David fled his marriage and future, booked passage on a Caribbean-bound steamer, then spent an embattled quarter-century laboring to return to obligations he had shed, meanwhile acquiring a new “family” and a second chance at happiness. About Grace possesses a seductive symbolic intensity, and abounds with gorgeous descriptions and metaphors (“The sea teething” on a coral reef; “the million distant candles of the stars”). But it’s much too long, and is significantly marred by its climactic momentum toward a reconciliation that simply isn’t very credible. Its protagonist’s loneliness, regret, and guilt are painfully palpable, and go a long way toward making this risky book work—but, in the end, aren’t enough.
A bold attempt, nevertheless, by a gifted writer whose own future looms promisingly indeed.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-6182-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This graceful story offers insights into family, friendship, and finding a way to move on after a loss.
A woman whose life has been knocked off balance by her daughter’s absence struggles to regain her equilibrium.
At first glance, Sarah would seem to have it all: a devoted husband, a Brooklyn brownstone, money, good looks (attracting attention even in her late 40s), privilege, the dregs of a successful career as a filmmaker, an agent waiting to support her next project. However, as Hershon’s novel unspools over the course of a long weekend, in which Sarah and her husband, Matthew, are violently mugged in Prospect Park and then travel upstate to reconnect with old friends—a couple named Kiki and Arman—we learn that Sarah’s life is far from perfect. Sarah and Matthew’s troubled 24-year-old daughter, Leda, has vanished from their lives; the stress caused by her yearslong absence has nearly cost Sarah her marriage (she and Matthew have reconciled after a two-year separation) and her career (she can’t write about Leda, yet neither can she write about anything else). Kiki and Arman, too, have their problems as well as a new baby daughter who stirs memories—both pleasant and painful—for Sarah. In clear, compassionate prose, Hershon (A Dual Inheritance, 2013, etc.) conjures characters readers may initially assume they know and then gently and gradually subverts those assumptions, revealing the emotions and difficulties with which these nuanced characters are grappling. Ultimately the author offers notes of hope—that the secrets and sadnesses, disappointments and distress that can damage relationships, derail pursuits, and erode lives when they are held inside and in isolation can resolve when shared; that sometimes finding a way back to one another is the best way to find a way forward.
This graceful story offers insights into family, friendship, and finding a way to move on after a loss.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-26814-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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