An ambitious and mostly successful work about an adolescent’s challenges to tradition.
Lothe’s debut historical novel offers the story of an Indian boy coming-of-age in the early 20th century.
According to the family astrologer, Shyam Shirodkar will eventually experience two nearly deadly accidents—before meeting his end in a third: “The question was not if but when the event would happen. Folks were so sure that they did not even call the doctor when Shyam fell ill.” As the story opens, his mother is dead, his father has remarried, and one of the three predicted accidents has already come to pass. Shyam is largely ignored by his extended family except for his kind, older cousin, Veemal. This general coldness leads Shyam to eventually leave home to receive an education at a Christian missionary college in Nagpur, and he begins to question the old ways of his former culture. In a country where Hindus, like the Shirodkars, are increasingly in conflict with Muslim neighbors, Western culture seems to offer a potential alternative for Shyam—until a massive war in Europe erupts and touches the lives of many Indian people. As Shyam grows and changes, so does his country around him, and neither of their fates are certain. Lothe writes in a highly detailed prose style that effectively captures the rigid traditions of life in Shyam’s Berar Province: “They quenched their thirst with another cup of hot tea since drinking water at the bus stand would guarantee a serious case of dysentery….After a couple incidents involving blown tires and interminable delays, the vehicle reached Amravati at dusk.” Overall, this is a slow-moving epic of family, philosophy, and cultural upheaval—a kind of novel that’s not often seen nowadays. Although the pace occasionally drags, Lothe manages to balance its many elements in a manner that makes the story feel at once personal and societal. Using Christianity as a way to explore the practices of Hinduism, for example, makes for a clever entrance into traditional Indian culture for insiders and outsiders alike.
An ambitious and mostly successful work about an adolescent’s challenges to tradition.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4808-7345-2
Page Count: 482
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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