A somber and sensitive dog-and-owner tale scrubbed clean of the genre’s usual sweetness.
The lives of a disobedient dog and its melancholy owner grow entangled in this allegorical novella.
The first novel published in English by the Colombian writer Quintana centers on Damaris, who’s living in a coastal town with an oft-absent fisherman husband, minding the home of the Reyeses, friends of her family. When she’s offered a puppy from a litter, the dog is at once a balm for her loneliness and a reminder of it: Unable to have children, she names the dog Chirli, after “the daughter I never had.” Chirli is an emotional trigger, and Damaris is soon recalling her failed efforts through healers to get pregnant and a moment in her childhood as she watched the Reyeses’ son get washed away by a large wave hitting a rocky shore. Every incident in this brief novel seems calibrated to show life’s tenuousness and violence: Humans and dogs die via gunshot, hatchet, and poison, and Damaris’ relationship with the dog frays as Chirli disappears into the nearby jungle, returning only to disappear again. Though the novel is short, Quintana patiently explores Damaris’ darkening mood, as Chirli’s untamed nature echoes its owner’s despair over keeping life under control: “Alone, totally alone, in a body that bore her no children and was good only for breaking things.” As Damaris’ and Chirli’s lives take increasingly tragic turns, their restless natures feel increasingly broadly symbolic of the difficulty of domesticating ourselves and others, even when it serves our best interests. In an author’s note, Quintana said she was inspired by seeing a female dog’s corpse on her first day on Colombia’s Pacific coast. “I thought, there is a huge story here,” she writes. “Huge” overstates things, but it’s an intense story despite its brevity.
A somber and sensitive dog-and-owner tale scrubbed clean of the genre’s usual sweetness.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64286-059-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: World Editions
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing...
Here’s a real find: a striking debut from an Afghan now living in the US. His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan’s tragic recent past.
Moving back and forth between Afghanistan and California, and spanning almost 40 years, the story begins in Afghanistan in the tranquil 1960s. Our protagonist Amir is a child in Kabul. The most important people in his life are Baba and Hassan. Father Baba is a wealthy Pashtun merchant, a larger-than-life figure, fretting over his bookish weakling of a son (the mother died giving birth); Hassan is his sweet-natured playmate, son of their servant Ali and a Hazara. Pashtuns have always dominated and ridiculed Hazaras, so Amir can’t help teasing Hassan, even though the Hazara staunchly defends him against neighborhood bullies like the “sociopath” Assef. The day, in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament is the best and worst of his young life. He bonds with Baba at last but deserts Hassan when the latter is raped by Assef. And it gets worse. With the still-loyal Hassan a constant reminder of his guilt, Amir makes life impossible for him and Ali, ultimately forcing them to leave town. Fast forward to the Russian occupation, flight to America, life in the Afghan exile community in the Bay Area. Amir becomes a writer and marries a beautiful Afghan; Baba dies of cancer. Then, in 2001, the past comes roaring back. Rahim, Baba’s old business partner who knows all about Amir’s transgressions, calls from Pakistan. Hassan has been executed by the Taliban; his son, Sohrab, must be rescued. Will Amir wipe the slate clean? So he returns to the hell of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and reclaims Sohrab from a Taliban leader (none other than Assef) after a terrifying showdown. Amir brings the traumatized child back to California and a bittersweet ending.
Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 1-57322-245-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists.
It’s time to harvest the cherries from their Michigan orchard, but the pandemic means that Joe Nelson; his wife, Lara; and their daughters, Emily, Maisie, and Nell, must pick all the fruit themselves.
To lighten the lengthy, grueling workdays, and prompted by the recent death of world-famous actor Peter Duke, the girls press Lara to tell them about her romance with Duke at Tom Lake, a summer stock company in Michigan, and her decision to give up acting after one big movie role. Lara’s reminiscences, peppered by feisty comments from her daughters and periodic appearances by her gentle, steadfast husband, provide the foundation for Patchett’s moving portrait of a woman looking back at a formative period in her life and sharing some—but only some—of it with her children. Duke flashes across her recollections as a wildly talented, nakedly ambitious, and extremely crazy young man clearly headed for stardom, but the real interest in this portion of the novel lies in Patchett’s delicate delineation of Lara’s dawning realization that, fine as she is as Emily in Our Town, she has a limited talent and lacks the drive that propels Duke and her friend and understudy Pallas. The fact that Pallas, who's Black, doesn’t get the break that Duke does is one strand in Patchett’s intricate and subtle thematic web, which also enfolds the nature of storytelling, the evolving dynamics of a family, and the complex interaction between destiny and choice. Lara’s daughters are standouts among the sharply dawn characterizations: once-volatile Emily, now settled down to be the heir apparent to the farm; no-nonsense veterinarian-in-training Maisie; and Nell, the aspiring actor and unerring observer who anticipates every turn in her mother’s tale. Patchett expertly handles her layered plot, embedding one charming revelation and one brutal (but in retrospect inevitable) betrayal into a dual narrative that deftly maintains readers’ interest in both the past and present action. These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming.
Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780063327528
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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