Yakimov (Ashes of Wars, 2011, etc.) tells the story of several interconnected people in Bulgaria in this novel.
In a series of interlocking episodes that move across time and locality, the author introduces the reader to life in Sofia under communism. Nedah is under pressure from her parents to marry the brother of a co-worker in order to extend her valued citizenship to him, though she thinks the much-sought-after prize isn’t nearly as important as it’s cracked up to be. “I must be worth more than a Sofia citizenship,” she muses. Her friend Vera is anxious to get married, but the man she wishes to wed drags his feet. She seeks out a fortuneteller for advice, but what she hears is not to her liking; upon returning home, she swallows a hundred chloroquine pills in a suicide attempt. The narrative shifts to tell the stories of some of Sofia’s exiles: there is Svetozar Stoimenov, a recent university graduate locked into a three-year contract at a job he despises, who manages to escape Bulgaria for a new life abroad. Then there is Stephan Filipov, a man who successfully eludes capture following the execution of politician Nikola Petkov but has left his family back in Sofia to an unknown fate. Connecting the tales is a narrator, now far removed from Sofia and the time period, who uses memory and digression in an attempt to understand the past. Yakimov writes in a deliberative prose that seeks to replicate the ennui of her characters while also slipping in the occasional moment of wryness: “They had to find ways to overcome the consequences of the misfortunate fact of having been brought into this world in a place not entirely to their tastes, a condition usually discovered on reaching maturity.” A short novel at only 116 pages, it follows an unorthodox path, its story meandering much like its protagonists through the haunted, otherworldly streets of Sofia. While not exactly a page-turner, the spell of Yakimov’s prose should ferry patient readers to the end, and they will likely be grateful for the experience.
A compact, but wide-ranging tale of dislocation in Sofia.
Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5236-2991-6
Page Count: 130
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
