Not for everyone, but undeniably impressive and well executed.
Cerebral first novel about a postwar Jewish-American couple who refuse to fit in the box society assigns them.
As his wife, Myrmy, remarks, Army veteran and traveling necktie salesman Dan has interests different than most Jewish men in the early 1960s. He gravitates towards physical activities like boxing and weightlifting, but he also cooks dinner for his family on most nights. Myrmy, for her part, rejects housedresses in favor of high heels, working as an advertising executive in New York even after her sons are born. The couple live in an upscale suburb, to which they are relegated after a realtor tells them that their first choice is not for people “like them.” They raise three boys while battling such hardships as Myrmy’s dangerous bout with pneumonia and Dan’s troubling ailments provoked by a thyroid burned out from radiation exposure during his military service. Their life together isn’t perfect, but when Dan suddenly dies, Myrmy realizes that it is impossible in many ways to understand herself without him. Alternate, nearly stream-of-consciousness narrations by Myrmy and Dan deftly delineate their respective methods of dealing with the same issues. In the most poignant instance, she makes smart retorts to an acquaintance who brings up her miscarriage, while he silently fumes at his smug neighbors and their six healthy daughters. The novel is hardly plot-driven, and sticking with it takes patience. But in flitting seamlessly from the mundane details of daily life to broader questions of love, family, priorities and death, the author has created a startlingly realistic depiction of the way the mind functions.
Not for everyone, but undeniably impressive and well executed.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-55597-442-2
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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