An intimate study of power within two of the relationships that define us most precisely—that of lover and that of child.
Echo, a Hollywood almost-was, is aging out of her chance at stardom. Then she meets Orly and Piggy—a dominatrix and her submissive—whose tender partnership helps her redefine what it means to give and to receive.
At 25, Echo seems to have missed her shot at the big time; she's foundered on the edges of a Hollywood career, toying with advertising, modeling, even the idea of high-end sex work but always returning to the inertia of hustling for bit parts and living off cash infusions from dad. Then, on a trip home to the Santa Monica–esque hills outside the city, Echo witnesses an accident that results in her father’s death. Her grief is claustrophobic, raw, and immobilizing. Though complicated by Echo’s difficult relationship with her thorny mother, her paralyzing sense of loss bogs down a character already mired in the fog of her unclear ambitions, and its haze threatens to submerge the book entirely. Fortunately, Echo’s miasma is pierced by a second, more dynamic character's perspective. Piggy is one of Echo’s new neighbors, a 50-something submissive and the antithesis to his housemate and dominatrix, the stunningly erotic Orly. Whereas Echo is a passive character, content to chronicle what she is offered in the heady descriptive voice that emerges as the author’s strong suit, Piggy’s desires are much clearer and more direct. His movement from the painful estrangement of his smothering marriage to becoming a member of a community that accepts him with both grace and ardor is nuanced and well-wrought. Meanwhile, the development of his relationship with Orly, his tumultuous rivalry with Echo as she assumes the role of Orly’s new assistant and lover, and his eventual reconciliation with both his partner and his own hard-won sense of self are the triumph of the novel. A sensitive and sympathetic figure, Piggy enlivens Echo’s character and allows the reader to view her as something other than a product of the cloud of privilege that seems to surround her.
An intimate study of power within two of the relationships that define us most precisely—that of lover and that of child.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-55245-380-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Coach House Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
PROFILES
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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