More Clochemerle than The Leopard, Hornby’s debut deals in types, cliché, and picturesque charm.
A morality tale unravels the mystery of an unlikely peasant girl and her Sicilian community.
Who was Mennulara, the spinster-maid of the Alfallipe family, who ran its finances and gave shelter to its widow after Judge Alfallipe died? Now that Mennulara herself is dead, tongues are wagging in the hill town of Roccacolomba. Was she a fine person or a servant-mistress with airs above her station? And why did the local mafia capo attend her funeral? Over the ensuing thirty days, every class, from priest to postal worker, will have something to contribute, in the way of reminiscence, observation, or judgment, while the snobbish Alfallipe family falls apart. First, they squabble over Mennulara’s instructions about her funeral notice. Then they cause a scene at the post office, in search of the monthly allowance she used to pay them. Their stereotypical foolishness reaches a high point over her posthumous instructions to arrange the valuation of eight previously hidden crates of Greek vases. When the museum declares them fakes, the enraged masters smash all the antiquities discovered in their library, cursing Mennulara for investing in worthless copies and eventually coming to blows among themselves. A subsequent letter explains Mennulara’s cunning plan: the export license granted for the fake vases could have been used to send the real ones—now in bits—out of the country, to be sold for a fortune. Additional gossip among village worthies reveals that Mennulara had been the mistress of Judge Alfallipe and his greatest love, but the true explanation for her untouchability and Midas touch arose from her teenage rape by the son of the mafia boss, Don Vincenzo Ancona. Twenty years after the event, the don did not refuse the offer she made him: continued silence in exchange for protection, investment advice, and respect. Now her money will fund a music competition. What are you gonna do?
More Clochemerle than The Leopard, Hornby’s debut deals in types, cliché, and picturesque charm.Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-18234-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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