Barber's sensational premise delivers an unexpectedly piercing exploration of loss and different kinds of faith.
In a novel that examines the divide between skepticism and religion, Barber (The Marlowe Papers, 2012, etc.) uses the sweeping ideas of faith and science to delve into the story of a man struggling with the ever incomprehensible force of grief.
Finlay Logan is a criminal psychologist in a near-future England where popular opinion and government action are pushing to classify religious fundamentalism as a mental illness. While investigating the medically defined sanity of April Smith, a teenager who committed a shocking atrocity inspired by her religious beliefs, Logan finds himself grappling with his own tenuous grip on mental health. Nearly destroyed by grief after the accidental death of his adored daughter, Logan seeks perverse solace in an excess of work and a growing gulf of misunderstanding between him and his wife. Despite his efforts, he struggles to connect with April enough to assess her sanity and turns to the alluring Gabrielle Salmon, a cognitive scientist who studies consciousness, induces spiritual experiences with lab equipment, and claims to have been in contact with the dead. Logan’s professional interest in belief becomes an intensely personal choice between pharmaceutical and religious salvation. The novel splits into alternate storylines based on his decision, playing with motifs borrowed from quantum mechanics. It survives this brutal division, bolstered by Logan’s fascinatingly miserable character, so finely drawn in competing urges. He is manipulative, unfaithful, dubious, and yet often motivated by the irreproachable urge of love. Though Barber sometimes veers into absurdly extended metaphors, that excess occasionally uncovers extraordinarily beautiful and piercing images that solidify a story of the ineffable. “Her eyes open painfully wide, and in a blink, two teary blinks, are emptied of love and stuffed to their lids with shock.”
Barber's sensational premise delivers an unexpectedly piercing exploration of loss and different kinds of faith.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78074-921-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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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