An intriguing if unsteady novel that slips and slides on all that ice, never quite finding its footing.
A meek bureaucrat travels to the Arctic in this new novel by Himmer (Writing, Literature and Publishing/Emerson College; The Bee-Loud Glade, 2011, etc.).
Himmer’s Everyman protagonist is Oscar, a man who once dreamed of exploring the Arctic but has instead settled for an office job at the Bureau of Ice Prognostication in Washington, D.C. Oscar's days at this strange government agency involve regularly checking a “pole cam” (which delivers real-time images of the Arctic) and focusing on the minutiae of his office, including the overhead light bulb and his food-obsessed partner, Alexi. As Oscar dreams of a more exciting life, Himmer finds shades of Walter Mitty. Then true adventure arrives; Oscar receives a new, mysterious assignment to travel to the Arctic. But what exactly is the purpose of this trip? And who are the strange men and women who seem to be following him, from the subways of D.C. to the cobblestone streets of Portland, Maine? Himmer’s core—the bureaucrat asked to do big things—recalls Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and the work of Douglas Adams, and there’s great hope that the novel will be a stunner once its plot gets rolling. But Himmer never quite finds his tone: if adventure, the book needs to move faster; if satire, it needs a firmer target. As a result, the novel feels static in its middle sections; even though Oscar is on a great journey, he has no control over any of it, and it's unclear where the tension and suspense lie. Himmer’s best writing is elegiac, as when Oscar reflects on his aloof wife and their disintegrating marriage. (In a great moment, Himmer makes the word “Moo” sound sadder than anything else.) But he doesn’t maintain this tone—doesn’t quite maintain any tone, really.
An intriguing if unsteady novel that slips and slides on all that ice, never quite finding its footing.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-935439-98-1
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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