A short but substantial work about aspiration and failure.
In Rogoff’s debut novel, two old rivals reunite in a snowed-in bar in New England.
Forty-year-old Sy Kirschbaum has spent the last 17 years of his life doing two things: translating the magnum opus of an alcoholic Czech dissident writer, Jan Horak, and pining after his old flame, Ida Fields. Now Sy has returned from Prague to his hometown of Portland, Maine, at Ida’s behest. But before he can see her, he must meet with her husband—his estranged friend, Gabe Slatky, a playwright. The two meet in a nautical-themed hotel bar—The Captain’s Cabin—just as a blizzard blows into the region. It’s difficult for them to speak to each other, because Ida’s three-month affair with Sy 17 years ago stands between them, as does the fact that she returned to Gabe (and that she chose him in the first place). They’re ostensibly there to discuss Ida, who’s fallen into a crippling depression that’s causing her to neglect Gabe and their daughter Hannah, as well as the theater that she and her husband founded together in the city. However, as the men order round after round of drinks (with each occasionally threatening to leave), they discuss their friendship, Jan Horak’s novel, Gabe’s one truly great play, and the glimpsed lives of other bar patrons. “It’s a strange thing,” observes Gabe at one point, “this habit of sitting here surrounded by a bunch of strangers, being both observer and observed, observed, that is, doing basically nothing. And this is the great social gathering point, the barroom.” The bar becomes the setting for a continuing dialogue about love, memory, unrealized dreams, and the attempt to find redemption in a single, great work of art. Rogoff writes in a dense prose that displays the erudition and self-awareness of its narrator, Sy, critiquing every object and person in detail, veering into digressive anecdotes, and capturing dry but thoughtful exchanges (Sy: “The past is suffocating.” Gabe: “Can’t be any different in Prague or anywhere else for that matter.” Sy: “But it’s not my past, it’s not so personal”). Although some initial, deliberate murkiness about Ida’s condition may frustrate readers, they will soon realize that she’s mostly beside the point, from a narrative perspective. In the claustrophobic universe of The Captain’s Cabin, Sy and Gabe are themselves on a stage, and whatever conflicts exist between them must be resolved before they walk off into the darkness. Despite the title, Rogoff’s work doesn’t evoke Edgar Allan Poe; rather, Sy and Gabe’s back and forth calls to mind Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett—particularly their vision of the world as rigged, absurd, and ultimately hopeless. Information comes slowly and circuitously, and its importance isn’t always immediately apparent. But as the evening wears on, the lives of real people and fictional characters begin to overlap and blur. This premise might not strike everyone as compelling, but it results in an intriguing locked-room mystery—one in which the mystery is art itself.
A short but substantial work about aspiration and failure.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944697-44-0
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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