A taut and disturbing tale of inspiration which poses questions about the darker material we draw on for art.
A study in loneliness, attention, and consequences: Sonia meets an admirer online and eventually can’t escape his control.
Spanish novelist Mesa (Mala Letra, 2016, etc.) writes of Sonia, who works a purposeless data entry job and wants to feel that her life has meaning. She meets Knut in a literary forum, and the two take their relationship into the realm of long emails (mostly Knut’s). Knut lavishes Sonia with letters and boxes of gifts: books, perfume, lingerie, and high-end clothing. Sonia has misgivings but doesn’t back away. She “isn’t truly curious about Knut. What attracts her is knowing that she’s the recipient of his attention.” “There’s a sort of agreement established,” and the terms are that Sonia will ceaselessly indulge him. As Sonia’s house fills with a glut of presents, Knut wields his strongest weapon, the ability to dominate Sonia’s thoughts. He tells her she should become a writer, but that suggestion is pregnant with expectation. “I sense plenty of talent in you…” he writes. “If you were more consistent—and less lazy—you’d be a great writer.” Knut wants to control Sonia’s input and output: what she reads and what she produces. Tension builds as each gift comes with a greater set of expectations. Sonia recognizes the nefariousness of Knut’s requests and knows that his gifts are stolen, but she can’t give up his admiration. Knut preys on her desire to please and be seen. She says, “He seemed so excited to send [the gifts] to me….How could I reject them? It would have been cruel.” Knut’s requests for vicarious pleasure increase until they drive Sonia from her comfort zone, but at a price.
A taut and disturbing tale of inspiration which poses questions about the darker material we draw on for art.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943150-27-4
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
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