Butler (The Empire of Night, 2014, etc.) risks taking on too many weighty themes for one novel: the shadow of Vietnam, the...
Two brothers, ages 68 and 70, revisit their lives as their father lies dying.
The book’s events cover one week, during which World War II veteran William Quinlan dies and his two sons, Robert and Jimmy, meet for the first time in decades. The sons’ lives have gone in wildly different directions: Jimmy broke ties with his family and went to Canada in the 1960s, choosing a bohemian life as a leather crafter and an open marriage. Robert went to Vietnam in an attempt to win his father’s approval. Now a college professor, he remains haunted by memories of the one soldier he killed and the Vietnamese girlfriend he never saw again; his marriage has gone emotionally stagnant. Both marriages reach crisis points in the week of William’s death, and both sons begin to resolve emotional issues left hanging since the Vietnam years. Meanwhile, Robert is headed toward a potentially violent confrontation he doesn’t see coming thanks to a chance encounter with an unhinged homeless man who has war-related scars of his own. Though this subplot adds suspense, the book’s resonance comes from the two sons’ struggles to make peace with their histories. The climactic scene, Robert’s conversation with his father on his deathbed, is devastating and beautifully written.
Butler (The Empire of Night, 2014, etc.) risks taking on too many weighty themes for one novel: the shadow of Vietnam, the push and pull of father-son relationships, the pitfalls of long-term marriages, and the psychic toll of aging. But with some compelling characters, Butler pulls it all together into a story that’s both complex and meaningful.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-802-12575-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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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