Razor-sharp and as caustic as acid, Kohler’s portraits of the vanity of human wishes could strip the paint off a barn.
A dozen stories by South African–born Kohler (Children of Pithiviers, 2001, etc.), set in a variety of locales from Europe to America to South Africa.
The characters here tend to be fragile, exquisite, mournful, and vaguely haunted. They are rarely what anyone would call happy, lucky or blessed, and they usually appear most satisfied with themselves when they’ve inflicted some tremendous pain on a close relative or friend. In “Casualty,” for example, an upper-class Frenchwoman avenges herself on her adulterous husband by taking a lover of her own—with near-tragic consequences for her child. “Underworld,” set in a posh South African boarding school, portrays a young girl trapped by the hypocrisy of the institution, where she is kept at school over the holidays as a punishment for some petty misbehavior—only to be molested by one of the teachers. The two older, aristocratic ladies of “Death in Rome,” who meet after many years apart for a reunion of their friendship, turn out to be well-bred vipers intent on vengeance for unforgiven slights from years gone by—just as the polite South African doctor in “Baboons” confesses one of his indiscretions to his wife out of sheer cruelty rather than guilt or remorse. It’s not a very nice crowd to run with: These are the sorts of people who plot adultery on the night before they get married (“Paris at Night”), hire prostitutes to manipulate their children (“Lunch With Mother”), and send out coy letters to potential lovers (“Rain Check”) the way most people send out résumés. They make amusing company, provided you don’t have to know them in real life.
Razor-sharp and as caustic as acid, Kohler’s portraits of the vanity of human wishes could strip the paint off a barn.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2003
ISBN: 0-86538-110-0
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Ontario Review
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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