Well-written and compelling; will appeal to both fans of the paranormal and serious students of the human condition.
Nichols’ literary novel examines the physical, psychological, metaphysical, and spiritual evolution of Sophia Deming, an unfulfilled 54-year-old Canadian expatriate, from the point of view of John Burns, a psychic who can remotely view the major events of her life.
Deming and Burns meet only once in the prologue to Nichols’ first novel, when Deming sits for a psychic reading from clairvoyant therapist Burns. She leaves skeptical of his predictions and returns to her life in Florida, her loving husband, and a job she is good at but increasingly dissatisfied with. By using Burns’ remote viewing as the basis for the narrative, Nichols pulls off a neat literary trick: an omniscient narrator who can delve into Deming’s thoughts as well as actions without the usual restrictions on editorial commentary. Burns can even see the auras, imps, sprites, tricksters, and ghosts surrounding Deming, allowing for well-wrought imagery that resonates through both their realities: “I could even see Ella Fitzgerald slowly emerge from the black and white poster like a smoky apparition singing a requiem for buried souls above the Kelly girls’ table,” says Burns. After various episodes of character building, Deming discovers The Antiquity, a play dedicated to her, written by the dead mother she’d always felt was closer to her two sisters. This discovery unleashes Deming’s true journey to full personhood—a path that simultaneously parallels both Burns’ predictions and the futuristic world foretold in The Antiquity. Nichols’ use of the psychic narrator generates an elegant prose style reminiscent of 19th-century writers: “The very first of these signals was the voice of a songbird whose whistles accompanied me during a walk on a summer afternoon near Wood Island.” Ultimately, the author adroitly guides Deming’s character toward an ending that satisfies on multiple levels.
Well-written and compelling; will appeal to both fans of the paranormal and serious students of the human condition.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4525-6846-1
Page Count: 268
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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