For people who like very complicated books that you have to read slowly and possibly twice.
The excitement of breaking a major discovery about 17th-century art turns to terror when an academic rechecks her primary source material.
In a strange coincidence, the publication of Pálsdóttir’s U.S. debut comes close on the heels of a similar situation in real life, as Naomi Wolf’s misinterpretation of a key term in historical documents has led to her forthcoming book’s being delayed and possibly withdrawn. Though not much is straightforward in this difficult novel, translated from the Icelandic, it is clear that the narrator has screwed up big time. After six years of slogging along on her dissertation, she realizes in an epiphanic moment that the diary she's been studying belongs to what is surely Britain’s very first professional female artist. She’s on the brink of publication when she realizes two pages were stuck together, and the entry she failed to read disproves her theory. When she realizes what she's done—and what it means for her future—her tenuous grasp on sanity is loosened. “I no longer know if I’m watching or imagining what’s in front of me,” she writes. She begins to have hallucinations and terrifying daydreams, and these are mixed in with events of her real life in such a way that the reader is similarly hard-pressed to know which is which. We meet her parents (her mother is an important character, the person who knows the most about her project, to whom she planned to dedicate the published book), her lackluster dope of a husband, and her vibrant circle of female friends. We hear about various sad events in her past, including a miscarriage. The ending, though far from happy, is clever and a nice reward for making it through the book. Fans of the nouveau roman—Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, etc.—will be right at home here.
For people who like very complicated books that you have to read slowly and possibly twice.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-940953-98-4
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
