Fans of McCarthy and filmmaker Terence Malick may enjoy Kloss’ stylistic and tonal experiments here, but for nearly everyone...
Our country has had its eccentrics, and one must surely be Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism and the subject of this dark, bold novel, which is nearly as eccentric as its subject.
In his second novel, Kloss (The Alligators of Abraham, 2012) chooses an unusual style—second-person narration, biblical language—to tell the story of an orphan born to a savage wilderness, his wanderings as a young man, and the visions that resulted in him leading people to what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Kloss riskily re-creates, in grisly close-up, an atmosphere of blood-soaked desperation that is his vision of the settler’s life in early America in order to show how its hardships and horrors might lead to religious fanaticism. That he succeeds to some degree does not make this novel pleasurable reading. It opens in a bewildering horror show of violence, which is like starting Heart of Darkness at its climax. And it goes on from there, with babies dying and bodies rotting beneath suicide ropes, using language and imagery that evoke Cormac McCarthy on an absinthe jag. The second-person narration is difficult at first but becomes appropriate as you slowly realize you’re in the bedazzled mind of a religious fanatic who believes he is hearing signs and being spoken to from on high, so “you” makes sense. But it is also relentless and tiring. When Smith’s story begins to emerge, the remembered outlines of that narrative propel this story forward, but it gets mired in uninteresting relationships (like Smith’s with his associate, Harris) and repetitive scenes with Smith’s long-suffering, faceless wife. There are many passages of powerful writing, but in other places the prose is marred by poor grammar; e.g: “unmoving in the snow you laid, hearing only the sound of her screams.” It's hard work to stay with this narrative.
Fans of McCarthy and filmmaker Terence Malick may enjoy Kloss’ stylistic and tonal experiments here, but for nearly everyone else, this novel is tough going.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-939419-50-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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