One doubt Muir doesn’t quell is whether such a fanciful treatise has a chance of enlightening that organism, but she...
An eccentric bestiary that playfully and thoughtfully underlines the pain and loss of extinction.
Muir (The Book of Telling, 2005, etc.), an academic, poet and essayist, combines fact and imagination in 20 fables narrated by an amateur naturalist named Sophie who has the ability to see invisible creatures. Without getting too didactic, each tale conveys a lesson about the beauty, fragility and complexity of living things. Humor and barbs come through in comments on politics, Wall Street and other subjects. There’s an invisible jackass that kicks people intent on making deals and money. “The Spiders of Theodora” offers Swiftian satire on the customs of a town like Washington, D.C. The sad “The Foster Fowl” touches on climate change and the role of even caring humans in hastening extinction. In "The Oormz," that cloudlike being drapes its faint cashmere self comfortingly over Sophie’s head and shoulders, helping dispel dark moods and recall memories of “the first spring I’d ever seen.” “The Golden Egg” is a marvelous capsule of natural history spanning many eons. “The Hypnogator,” with its mesmerizing reptile, stands out as one of the few tales (“The Foster Fowl” is another) with the heft of a good short story, not to mention crackling suspense. Sophie sometimes consults her biologist sister, Evie, who adds to a stratum of science that runs through the fantasy like a long, faith-building footnote for the dubious reader. In stark moments, the real world sounds like this: The “mass extinction” of species “is the only one caused by a single organism capable of seeing the big picture, understanding its own destructive role, and changing that.”
One doubt Muir doesn’t quell is whether such a fanciful treatise has a chance of enlightening that organism, but she deserves a good-size audience to give the experiment a fair shot.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934137-80-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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