Emotionally complex, politically intelligent, beautifully written: Among the best from a novelist in the classic American...
In a small city north of Boston in the late ’60s, a boy expands his horizons even as he discovers the enduring strength of “loyalty to a neighborhood and affection for a family—those twin steel bonds of the working class”—in Merullo’s elegiac fourth novel, a companion to Revere Beach Boulevard (1998).
Anthony Benedetto looks back on his youth in Revere, Massachusetts, from the vantage of middle age in rural Vermont, where he is a modestly successful portrait painter. Tonio is only 11 when his parents die in a plane crash; he’s raised by his gentle, reflective grandfather and strong, serene grandmother, who temper his early introduction to life’s existential uncertainty with their personal examples of loving devotion to duty, work, and kin. His anxious, edgy uncle Peter, a Golden Gloves boxer who retreated back to the neighborhood after losing a crucial bout, reminds him how confining their world can be. Peter’s daughter Rosalie is Tonio’s close friend, but she pushes him away in adolescence, when Tonio’s good grades and hockey skills take him to Exeter while Rosalie remains in the tough local high school, running around with its meanest creep. Tonio feels comfortable enough among Exeter’s privileged students, though he and his African-American roommate are drawn especially close by their ambiguous relationship with the less fortunate folks back home now that they’ve “gone off and joined the oppressor.” Despite a suicide attempt, a lingering death, and references to several future bad ends, the narrator’s tone is rueful and meditative rather than anguished. Most writers begin with their coming-of-agers, but Merullo was wise to wait. His artistic maturity gives us a tale of sentiment without sentimentality as he conveys the inevitability of loss and the divisions of class with sadness but not bitterness.
Emotionally complex, politically intelligent, beautifully written: Among the best from a novelist in the classic American tradition.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-609-61032-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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