While Malcolm’s trajectory feels complete, Noah’s seems to be an afterthought in a novel that isn't really about him.
A young man struggling with his gender identity and a middle-aged psychologist connect with one another in Basch’s (The Passion of Reverend Nash, 2003, etc.) complex and thoughtful new novel.
Malcolm Dowd is a listener, receiving updates on the lives of his patients and gleaning information where he can about his two daughters. When he feels the desire to offer up an anecdote or bit of personal information, he reminds himself “that he got paid as much for what he didn’t say as what he did, more maybe.” After the tragic death of his wife, he's been plunged into single fatherhood, often withholding information that he believes his daughters are not ready to hear or that he's too frightened to share. Noah, a young patient of Malcolm’s, confesses that he relates more to his feminine side, hiding makeup, wigs and women’s clothing deep in his closet. The novel alternates between the perspectives of Malcolm and Noah, linking them to one another in deep and sometimes too-coincidental ways that hinge on chance meetings and characters who are overly secretive. While Noah longs to define himself on his own terms, he's also desperate for a father figure, which he tries to find in Malcolm. The feeling is not unrequited, with Malcolm commenting on his own paternal instincts toward this boy he barely knows. Malcolm slowly begins to realize that approaching the world as a psychologist is not enough for his family when he's forced to reveal more about the circumstances surrounding his wife’s death to his daughters.
While Malcolm’s trajectory feels complete, Noah’s seems to be an afterthought in a novel that isn't really about him.Pub Date: March 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-688-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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