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THE CHILL

Name: THE CHILL
Author: Romano Bilenchi
ISBN: 978-1-933372-90-7

by Romano Bilenchi and translated by Ann Goldstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2009

Episodic and often surreal, with dark, complicated psychological undercurrents.

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First English-language publication of a 1984 tale of knowledge gained and innocence lost in 1920s Tuscany, by rarely translated Viareggio Prize winner Bilenchi (1909–89).

A metaphorical chill begins to encroach on the 16-year-old narrator’s awareness with the death of his grandfather, a benevolent figure writ large on a young mind. Not long before, the old man had taken his grandson to an archaeological site where the discovery of a purse of Roman coins left a lasting impression of both history and impermanence. “Awareness of the transient is what gives value to man’s life,” declared grandfather, and this theme tints the narrator’s ongoing reflections on his emotionally turbulent experiences. The grandfather’s obsession with the Longobards who once invaded their region of Italy, the ruins that punctuate the landscape, seen from climbs up Monte Luca with an eccentric math teacher, the ancient fortresses and threshing floors, all contribute to the sense of a volcanic past seething beneath the idyllic surface. The narrator fears that his father will react in anger to rumors bandied about his mother, fears retribution for ratting out a friend for despicable treatment of girls and, when he himself is accused of wanting to touch the bosom of a man’s wife, fears that this minor transgression will diminish him in the eyes of his mother and the community. The darkness of the characters stands in stark contrast to the pastoral landscape: Adolescents hatch plots beneath the surface of a sunflower field, young ladies are sent to live with distant relatives for their dalliances with married men, or go to prison for botched abortions. When his friend spills another’s blood, the narrator is both wounded and infected with the impulse to violence. In this narrative of a transformation, we are left wondering whether the chill of emotional exile is externally imposed, or a product of the narrator’s own volition.

Episodic and often surreal, with dark, complicated psychological undercurrents.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-933372-90-7

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Europa Editions

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THINGS FALL APART

by Chinua Achebe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 23, 1958

This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THERE WAS A COUNTRY
by Chinua Achebe

- BOOK REVIEW
THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD
by Chinua Achebe

- BOOK REVIEW
HOME AND EXILE
by Chinua Achebe

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.