As told by Donnie Phillips, Lee's debut novel about fly- fishing in Montana is bestrewn with glorious malapropisms: ``I have a good vocabulary for a fishing guide, but I know I ain't no Rogue Scholar, so when I come upon a new word I study on it some.'' The main new word Donnie studies is piscatorial, as in ``Dear Piscatorial Partners,'' which is how he opens the letters that comprise this epistolary novel and that he sends to Manhattan Chapter #6 of Trout Unlimited. This opening, further, lets him avoid mentioning women (``effeminate females,'' as he would have it) in his discussions of the men-only (as he would have it) art of trout fishing. Piscatorial derives from the Roman Empire, where a local angler, seeing women fishing, remarked, ``Ain't that a piss- cutter!'' Says Donnie: ``The empire collapsed soon after that, and historians have misinterpreted the remark and decided that `piscator' was a Latin term meaning fishermen.'' When New Yorker Elliott, separated from his wife back in the city, arrives to teach English and creative writing, he hires Donnie as a guide to show him some fishing water—which he does, though forever twisting other people's superior abilities, including Elliott's graceful and accurate casting, in his own form of one-upmanship. Meanwhile, Donnie is somehow married to Nancy, who has a degree in psychology and sociology and works for a local home where they help people who are really messed up. When Donnie's boss Wally fires him and hires Elliott to replace him, Elliott's girlfriend Beth, suggests that she, Elliott, Donnie, and Nancy build their own B&B lodge for fishing guests. Before Donnie knows it, a whole passel of fisherwomen from New York have their eye on the lodge-to-be. Good fun and steadily amusing, though it seldom plucks at the heartstrings as does, say, Ring Lardner, the master of authoritative stupidity and lingual description.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-55821-603-0
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
