Reminiscent of A.S. Byatt's Possession, though less lofty, Michaels's latest (Vanish With the Rose, etc.) sets a feminist literary scholar chasing after the origins of an 18th-century manuscript on a Virginia estate—and finding unexpected romance along the way. English professor Karen Holloway is thrilled to come upon a novel by a mysterious early American writer who identified herself only as ``Ismene.'' Karen had begun to make her academic reputation when she discovered and edited a book of Ismene's poetry. Now she recognizes the chance for a scholarly coup. She traces the provenance of the manuscript to an old, decrepit estate in Tidewater Virginia, owned by the handsome, melancholy Cameron Hayes, then takes an apartment in the neighboring town to use as base camp for her explorations. Karen is subjected to the nosy intrusions of her landlady, who ropes her into giving a talk to the local ladies' literary club—but the old woman gets more than she bargained for when Karen mischievously chooses as her topic ``The Pen as Penis.'' Meanwhile, other English professors have caught the scent of a literary discovery and converge upon the town hoping to beat Karen out in bringing to light Ismene's true identity. Quickly it becomes clear that this will be a gloves-off competition: Karen is attacked in her apartment, nearly run over, and stalked. Her search is also impeded by eerie supernatural events: every time she approaches an old stone bunker in the woods near the estate's main house, a disembodied scream rings out, scaring her witless. Adding to the suspense is a question: Will the bristly Karen allow herself to be won over by either of the two men vying for her affections- -the taciturn Cameron Hayes and the slick rival scholar Bill Meyers? It never gets the pulse pounding, but it's diverting—with a refreshingly intelligent and unstereotypical heroine.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 4-77001-736-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
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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