A beautifully rendered if often attenuated first novel about social disintegration in India and in a contemporary Lilliput. Mixing fable and reportage, Shankar (now teaching at Rutgers Univ.) describes two superficially different societies: Madras, a Tamil-speaking city in India, and the land of Lilliput, first described, of course, by Swift in Gulliver's Travels. The two, it turns out, have much in common, and the alternating accounts by two very different characters create an impressively nuanced portrait of neototalitarian societies. In both states, leaders mouth platitudes about the people's good while lining their own pockets, dissidence is violently suppressed, and thugs rule the streets. The Madras narrator is C. Ramakrishnan, usually known as RK. Back from the States with a master's degree, he's marking time until he begins law school. The narrator of the Lilliput tales is Valur Vishveswaran, a modest, fearful, rather odd figure. To pass the time, RK becomes increasingly involved in a local political campaign. Shanthamma, a noted labor organizer, has decided to run against the party machine in the upcoming elections, but as RK and others try to help her, her opponents turn violent. Shanthamma is murdered, and when the authorities try to suppress the investigation into her murder, riots break out. Pressure mounts to see justice done. Meanwhile, alone in his room, Valur records how old papers he discovered led him to Lilliput, which, he realized only dangerously late, was a chilling police state in miniature. Both man and nature were held under strict control: Forests were destroyed to make model cities, and all dissent was forbidden. Soon in trouble, Valur flees with Fargo Withrun, whose dissident lover has been killed. An ambitious political allegory that sets the scene and makes the point, but at last fails to take flight. The two tales never entirely mesh, and the anger at human perfidy remains curiously muted.
Pub Date: May 27, 1997
ISBN: 0-435-08143-8
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Heinemann
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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