Whether read as a novel of ideas (as is intended) or as a roman a (which it also is), this fascinating long novel is by far the author's best work. It starts at Christmas, 1944, and traces through four years the development among a group of Paris left-wing intellectuals. The goal is to tell how these men and women, united during the war in the Resistance and by the common, necessary action involved, reacted and divided in peace. The story is told in alternating chapters,- half in the third person about Henri Perron, writer and editor of an underground newspaper, half in the first person by Anne Dubreuilk, a psychiatrist (de Beauvoir herself). Anne's husband, Robert, a Sartre-like figure, starts the S.R.L., a movement of the non-Communist left, and persuades Henri to back it with his paper. Then they split over breaking the story of Russian slave labor camps- and an unfounded suspicion that Robert has become a secret Communist. Later they are reunited in feeling that the intellectuals must maintain a position around which liberals who can't swallow either Capitalism or Communism can rally. Besides the political story there are several love stories, one an extraordinary and wonderful story of Anne and an American writer (whom the literary cognescenti will recognize). This is alternately idyllic, passionate, horrifying and tragic — and extraordinarily objective. The picture of America, too, is unusual in view of de Beauvoir's expected attitude. The book offers more than space permits in detail:- political discussion, graphic sex, sharp pen portraits of types and individuals in the literary scene, some travel writing, even a few-episodes of straight action. Despite all this, the novel is not a hedge podge; its parts are well integrated with the central theme. Readers may be divided in their acceptance, but the book is certain of significant critical reception. A certain awkwardness of translation is unfortunate, but despite this, the book — for the initiate- is well worth the price.
Pub Date: May 28, 1956
ISBN: 0393318834
Page Count: 612
Publisher: World
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1956
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The perils of country living are brought to light in a confidently executed novel.
Family bonds are twisted and broken in Jordan’s meditation on the fallen South.
Debut novelist Jordan won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for this disquieting reflection on rural America, told from multiple perspectives. After steadfastly guarding her virginity for three decades, cosmopolitan Memphis schoolmarm Laura Chappell agrees to marry a rigid suitor named Henry McAllan, and in 1940 they have their first child. At the end of World War II, Henry drags his bride, their now expanded brood and his sadistic Pappy off to a vile, primitive farm in the backwaters of Mississippi that she names “Mudbound.” Promised an antebellum plantation, Laura finds that Henry has been fleeced and her family is soon living in a bleak, weather-beaten farmhouse lacking running water and electricity. Resigned to an uncomfortable truce, the McAllans stubbornly and meagerly carve out a living on the unforgiving Delta. Their unsteady marriage becomes more complicated with the arrival of Henry’s enigmatic brother Jamie, plagued by his father’s wrath, a drinking problem and the guilt of razing Europe as a bomber pilot. Adding his voice to the narrative is Ronsel Jackson, the son of one of the farm’s tenants, whose heroism as a tank soldier stands for naught against the racism of the hard-drinking, deeply bigoted community. Punctuated by an illicit affair, a gruesome hate crime and finally a quiet, just murder in the night, the book imparts misery upon the wicked—but the innocent suffer as well. “Sometimes it’s necessary to do wrong,” claims Jamie McAllan in the book’s equivocal dénouement. “Sometimes it’s the only way to make things right.”
The perils of country living are brought to light in a confidently executed novel.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-56512-569-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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