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
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because...
Brutal and relentless debut fiction takes anarcho-S&M chic to a whole new level—in a creepy, dystopic, confrontational novel that's also cynically smart and sharply written.
Palahniuk's insomniac narrator, a drone who works as a product recall coordinator, spends his free time crashing support groups for the dying. But his after-hours life changes for the weirder when he hooks up with Tyler Durden, a waiter and projectionist with plans to screw up the world—he's a "guerilla terrorist of the service industry." "Project Mayhem" seems taken from a page in The Anarchist Cookbook and starts small: Durden splices subliminal scenes of porno into family films and he spits into customers' soup. Things take off, though, when he begins the fight club—a gruesome late-night sport in which men beat each other up as partial initiation into Durden's bigger scheme: a supersecret strike group to carry out his wilder ideas. Durden finances his scheme with a soap-making business that secretly steals its main ingredient—the fat sucked from liposuction. Durden's cultlike groups spread like wildfire, his followers recognizable by their open wounds and scars. Seeking oblivion and self-destruction, the leader preaches anarchist fundamentalism: "Losing all hope was freedom," and "Everything is falling apart"—all of which is just his desperate attempt to get God's attention. As the narrator begins to reject Durden's revolution, he starts to realize that the legendary lunatic is just himself, or the part of himself that takes over when he falls asleep. Though he lands in heaven, which closely resembles a psycho ward, the narrator/Durden lives on in his flourishing clubs.
This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self-described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because it's so compelling.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03976-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
BOOK TO SCREEN
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