Expertly blending plot and character, each of these taut, propulsive tales possesses novelistic depth.
Seven linked stories explore aspects of contemporary manhood.
Though all but one are set in a small corner of Michigan’s remote, rugged Upper Peninsula, the seven stories that compose this collection are anything but claustrophobic. Probing deeply into the male psyche, Caputo (Some Rise by Sin, 2017, etc.) confidently tackles subjects that include the sometimes-catastrophic price of failure, the relations between fathers and sons, and the emotional battles faced by returning combat veterans. While hunting figures prominently in most of the stories—like “Blockers,” in which three high school friends reunite on a fateful weeklong bird-hunting trip, or “The Nature of Love on the Last Frontier,” set in the Alaskan bush as a father and son lock horns in a tense generational conflict that turns life-threatening—even readers unfamiliar with that pursuit will find themselves immersed in Caputo’s fast-moving narratives. In vivid and minutely observant prose, he writes with assurance about his characters’ wilderness experiences and with equal sensitivity about the captivating natural beauty that surrounds them. Will Treadwell, a Vietnam veteran and one-time owner of a popular local brewpub, appears in five of the stories, including “Dreamers,” which is built around an incident of frightening violence, and “Lost,” an understated evocation of the terror of accidental isolation in the unforgiving forest. His recurring presence is a quietly effective linking device. “The Guest,” a portrait of an episodic middle-age affair and the only story with a female protagonist, brings back Lisa Williams from “Blockers” years after her life has been altered irrevocably by the events of the earlier story. The collection’s final entry, “Lines of Departure,” again features Treadwell and a narrator named Phil, whose biography bears some resemblance to Caputo’s own. Unfolding at a weekend retreat for troubled veterans, it’s a compassionate glimpse of how “the psychic pain of war’s aftermath could be as isolating as acute physical pain” and a fitting conclusion to an intense, often unsettling journey into the male mind and heart.
Expertly blending plot and character, each of these taut, propulsive tales possesses novelistic depth.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62779-476-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
IN THE NEWS
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
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