A contrast between Saudi and American ways that sets the stage for an engrossing exploration of personal and political...
A hard-driving designer seeks acclaim by competing to develop a Middle Eastern museum only to discover that the project’s real value is different from what she imagined.
Grinell (Appetite, 2016, etc.) paints a detailed portrait of ambitious museum developer Joanna Dunhill and her business partner and husband, Everett Dana, in this novel. If their company gets the contract to create a Saudi Arabian children’s museum, Jo thinks fame and success will be hers. Ev, who wants to spend his time cloistered in his studio designing displays, is not so sure seeking contractual relationships with the Saudis is such a great idea. Ev finds the Saudis devious and their obscure ethos quite disturbing. Jo and Ev’s business negotiations provide the framework for a story whose real center is the social and ethical issues, cultural conflicts, and oddities of Saudi life that control and censor the populace, especially women. The tale contrasts Saudi customs with American social mores, deftly drawing out tensions that not only involve Jo and Ev, but also Jo’s haphazard sister, Diane, and her young assistant, Becca. Jo wants to mentor Becca, who has a crush on Ev. And while Jo disparages Ev’s childishness, his imagination is the key to their success because he thinks like a kid. “Sometimes she thought him incapable of reasoning like an adult,” Jo muses. “But the flip side, his ability to sense the world as it appeared to children, earned their living.” Lucidly written, the author’s disclosures about her characters’ inner lives provide rich turf for this story. The players’ repeated trips to Saudi Arabia and their contract talks spotlight the deep cultural divides that supply a focus for the engaging tale. Jo’s deepening relationship with Saudi translator Myriam shows that supporting women’s rights in Saudi Arabia means taking baby steps, a strategy that challenges Jo’s definition of feminism.
A contrast between Saudi and American ways that sets the stage for an engrossing exploration of personal and political issues.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-648-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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