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
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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