This novel is populated by storytellers. One by one, they tell us that nothing, even magic (a 12-foot woman who mothers...
A study in contrasts, this novel uses magic to illuminate poverty, violence and loss.
New City, India, contains multitudes. Journalist and novelist Jha (Fireproof, 2007, etc.) introduces the city through three main characters, Woman, Man and Child, whose disparate stories anchor the narrative as the tension between rich and poor plays out again and again. Man and his driver are stuck on the freeway as police use water cannons to disperse Old City protestors who haven’t had water or electricity for days. A “quota” medical school student sees his beloved girlfriend protesting the presence of lower castes on campus. Readers first meet Woman as she recalls the past to her grown daughter, home after a long time away. Woman draws readers in with gorgeous language: "And, thus assured, you run away, leaving a hole in the air, shimmering, through which the afternoon leaks away and evening drips in, mixes, dissolves the scents you leave behind." On the next page, the tone turns to menace as we meet Man, a wealthy loner: "He is going to kill and he is going to die. That's all we know for now, let's see what happens in between." The third character, Child, is abandoned and officially named “Orphan” by a media-savvy orphanage administrator. Each character’s story is driven forward by fear and mystery—the greatest mystery of all being how these stories and characters are connected. Ultimately, the character who links the three is named but never given much of a voice.
This novel is populated by storytellers. One by one, they tell us that nothing, even magic (a 12-foot woman who mothers mothers or a dog who transports an orphan to safety), can erase the ugly highs and lows of life in modern India.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62040-904-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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