Highly imaginative but unfortunately titled and depressing from first page to last, the novel won’t send anyone rushing to...
Kluge chronicles the overlapping lives of strangers who travel to Saipan and find an America they never expected.
George Griffin is a disillusioned travel writer whose latest book proposal isn’t exactly working out the way he wanted. Stephanie Warner is an academic running away from a failed marriage. Mel Brodie, a Jewish businessman, and Khan, a Bangladeshi worker, round out the core cast of characters arriving on the same flight, each hoping to find on the South Pacific island of Saipan the something that’s missing from their lives. Home to fierce fighting in World War II, Saipan became a U.S. Commonwealth, but other than the title, there is very little about the small island that speaks to the American way of life. With a tropical climate blanketing the ruins of a war fought many decades ago and the remnants of failed motels and industrial buildings littering the roads, the island speaks to immigrants looking to better their situations. Many of them find exactly the opposite, working in jobs where they are treated like slaves, earning barely enough to survive. While the island’s residents like to tout the place as paradise, one person spends much of his time bursting that bubble. Known for reasons Kluge never fully explains as the Master Blaster, this rebel maintains a website that critically examines Saipan, leading to threats and attempts to unmask his identity. Kluge’s story, told in turn by the different travelers, traces the intersection of his characters’ lives and how they relate both to one another and to Saipan. The writing is right on the mark, with the author migrating effortlessly from one point of view to another. And the characters interact plausibly, their stories overlapping almost imperceptibly, but the picture he paints of Saipan is depressing: In Kluge’s hands the island becomes a down-on-its-luck Paradise wannabe that exists only to bilk migrants of their dreams.
Highly imaginative but unfortunately titled and depressing from first page to last, the novel won’t send anyone rushing to book a vacation on the island of Saipan.Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59020-322-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
