Stowe (Not the End of the World, 1992) again explores family dysfunction, but this smart, carefully written second novel is much more than its subject: It's brittle and sharp, poignant and tough- minded, a balancing act that takes a breathtaking aesthetic risk. Stowe's narrator, Ginger Moore, is also much more than her rÇsumÇ: a middle-aged divorced New Yorker who writes biographies of obscure female figures in English literature whose talents went unnoticed or unfulfilled. For all of her relentless self-criticism, and her reflexive sarcasm, she's no whiner, partly because she's a duty-bound midwestern WASP. Her Christmas trip to Michigan—a pilgrimage that lends the book structure—also stirs up various revelations about family resentments and secrets. Her mother, Virginia, a former southern belle, now wallows in desperation and need, and an ``insatiable appetite for vodka'' that developed after the accidental death of her third child. Ginger's 41-year old brother, Cease (for Cecil), is bitter, sardonic, consumed by his hatred for his mother, secretly blaming himself for both his brother's death and his mother's retreat into booze. Meanwhile, Cecil Sr., a wealthy retired lawyer, enjoys his willed oblivion— his gentle jokes and his everyday routines. Admittedly ``intense,'' Ginger approaches the holidays with customary dread—this is a family who watches Psycho on Christmas Eve, after all. What makes the novel so compelling are the voices distilled through Ginger's consciousness: her smart-mouthed boyfriend, a hot young Dennis Leary-like comic; her Panel of Judges, a superego drawn from literary history; and her own overwrought intelligence. She scrutinizes the world, and her family history, with Jamesian intensity only to discover its transparency, which also makes her suspicious of all the pop insights that might otherwise define (and neatly dismiss) this screwed-up brood. Further proof that art often emerges from the most ordinary materials, transformed by style, humor, and grace.
Pub Date: June 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42066-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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