An unnamed narrator relates the marvelous 17th-century history of a remote Caribbean island (Birdland) in this lushly imaginative latest by the author of The Jade Cabinet (1993), among other fancifully erudite fictions that seem to combine the strengths and weaknesses of Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Burton, and Ducornet's probably closest model, the late Angela Carter. It's the story of a foundling, named Phosphor (for the literal ``luminosity'' he exudes), and the ``mendicant scholar'' Foginius, who raises and educates the boy, all the while thwarting and stifling Phosphor's ravenous intellectual curiosity. Fascinated by the seemingly magical properties of light, Phosphor invents the ``ocalurscope''an early version of the camera. Falling in love with professor Tardanza's lissome daughter Extravaganza, the young inventor determines to ``capture'' the island both in photographic images and in the epic poem (excerpts from which show up in the text) that he's writing in celebration of his beloved. Phosphor's talents are commandeered by the wealthy nobleman Fantasma, whose dream of aggrandizement mocks and perverts the former's rapturous worship of ``the mutable word'' he thus records. Ducornet's beautiful sentences, crammed with arcane and fascinating particulars, incarnate a sensual delight in the material world far stronger than any desires to exploit or possess it. The polymathic lyricism of her prose, which is quite capable of feyness and preciosity, is equally often richly amusing, especially in her superbly offbeat figurative language (e.g, a beautiful woman's laughter ``rattled and thundered in his brain like the body of a vampire eager to leave is coffin'') and also in the learned footnotes that embellish the text, giving to the whole a convincingly antiquarian air. Not, perhaps, for every taste, Ducornet's fabulous narrative contrivances offer the serious reader both an unusual challenge and a dreamy scape from the constrictions of realism. She's something of a mythical beast herself: a surrealist with a sense of humor, and also a sense of history.
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1995
ISBN: 1-56478-084-8
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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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