On balance, though, a life with too little life.
Even the title smacks of loserdom for a 42-year-old narrator-novelist turned first-grade teacher determined to have a life—in Lewis’s fourth (The Answer Is Yes, 1998), a pale, unmemorable tale.
Sales of San Diego writer Charlotte Dearborn’s self-effacing novels (My Self-Portrait of Someone Else, etc.) have gone nowhere, and when she’s nominated third place for a book award in a category (horror) that she doesn’t write in, she decides it’s time to call it quits and try another field. She breaks with her low-commitment boyfriend, Andrew, moves into her own place with the help of her married-with-kids sister, Emily, and starts a new career as a first-grade teacher. But Charlotte hasn’t counted on the unsupportive teaching staff, who ridicule her for her decision to go into teaching for “the money” (and for her inability to control her class); or on the cute, divorced sixth-grade teacher Rick Barnstable, who wants nothing to do with her dopiness and desperation; or on her unruly class of unpredictable six-year-olds. In flashbacks, we learn of Charlotte’s previous grind as a novelist, the sudden highs of miscalculation by her New York editor, Howard, and her lowest moments facing a public reading with no one there. When she finally decides to introduce some discipline into her new life by imitating a severely upbeat Jane Eyre–like character from an unfinished novel she’s been writing, Janet Greenhill, her destiny turns around. Too late, though, to undo the reader-damage already done by the dominant air of triteness and defeat in Lewis’s own writing, or by her way of proceeding so listlessly as to suppress much of any characterization. The prose is curiously odorless, colorless, and tasteless—conceivably a calculated effect, but not one that works very well. Most noteworthy is the record of Charlotte’s 15-year gyration through New York publishing hoops.
On balance, though, a life with too little life.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-3669-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
