With this austere one-note monologue, Heti offers a plate of sour grapes. Ultimately, her work is not daring or terribly...
A difficult novella that’s a riff on literature’s outsiders and insiders; it’s the second experimental work from this young Canadian author, following her collection The Middle Stories (2001, not reviewed).
“There were no books when I was a boy . . . other boys had books . . . no, the whole country lacked books.” So goes the opening as the narrator, Ticknor, revises and contradicts himself, sorting through his memories of early-19th-century New England. Slowly, a contrast emerges. There is privation (Ticknor’s experience) and there is plenty, enjoyed by his childhood friend Prescott. (The latter was a respected American historian; Ticknor, a Harvard professor, was his biographer.) As they mature, the contrast sharpens. The world of 19th-century Boston is Prescott’s oyster. His work receives “a great roar from the national press,” while Ticknor has been working ten years on one article, and cannot even get Prescott’s opinion of it. Prescott bests him with women, too. He is happily married to the ample Claire; Ticknor, a bachelor, lusts after her, to Claire’s disgust. Yet they stay in touch, inviting Ticknor to supper; the fussbudget endlessly deliberates his preparations for the occasion. Prescott’s life is not all peaches and cream. As a schoolboy, he had received a bread roll smack in the eye and suffered recurring vision problems. Did Ticknor inadvertently launch the offending roll, and then refuse to apologize? And does it really matter? Heti’s work is kin to Nabokov’s Pale Fire in its portrayal of a problematic relationship between two writers, strung with tripwires, fueled by obsession. Ticknor will outlive Prescott, and he will mourn “the extinguishing of a flame that had burned so brightly”; we are left guessing whether that is a sincere tribute or bitter irony.
With this austere one-note monologue, Heti offers a plate of sour grapes. Ultimately, her work is not daring or terribly experimental.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 0-374-27754-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
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This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.
Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.
Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961
ISBN: 0684833395
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961
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