A tour de force, reminiscent of the best of John Fowles and David Mitchell.
A nightmare from the liminal world between sanity and insanity, between language and silence.
Substantially shorter than the inaugural volume (The Wake, 2014) in a projected trilogy-cum–genealogical saga, Kingsnorth’s latest also seems more assured. In part, that’s because he writes in modern English rather than the Old English–ish tongue of the first book; in part it’s because the concerns will seem immediate to modern readers: the world is going to hell, and about the only sensible approach to living in it is to go mad. Edward Buckmaster is a hermit in the woodlands of western England; he’s tried the city and did not like it, so now he camps outdoors or inside a collapsing old barn. “On the high moor there are patterns and in my small mind there are patterns,” he reflects, “and my breath fogs on the windows here and when I leave a footprint in the yard it stays for weeks.” One pattern that Buckmaster sees is the inherent beastliness of the world: the lion hiding in the storm cloud, the serpent coiled in lightning. And literally: a hare with almost human eyes has been haunting him ever since he saw it under an ash tree, pausing as if to speak to him. Some other beast, Buckmaster fears, is descending upon him, and his special madness lies in trying to divine what it is: “Someone is waiting for me where the moor ends. I think there is much that I do not see.” As Buckmaster unhinges, Kingsnorth’s language becomes an onrushing torrent of words, long passages of internal monologue without much punctuation or capitalization: “the potato is disgusting my mouth is cracked and dry like glasspaper why did i eat a raw potato what a stupid thing to do.” The effect is one of compelling immediacy as Kingsnorth recounts what it is to live in a time and place that is crumbling at the edges.
A tour de force, reminiscent of the best of John Fowles and David Mitchell.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55597-779-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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