Wood (Arroyo, 2001) moves her characters gracefully through trying times, both cultural and personal.
A novel that follows the growth of a young boy—appropriately named Wrecker because caution is not a major aspect of his personality—to a man of 20, ready to take off on his own.
The circumstances that bring Wrecker to Bow Farm are unusual. He’s born in 1965 to a young woman who three years later is convicted of a crime involving drugs and guns. She’s put in prison for the foreseeable future, and her son is claimed by her brother-in-law Len, who doesn’t really want the burden and responsibility of a child, especially since Len’s wife, Meg, has recently suffered brain damage as the result of an infection. Len lives on a remote farm in the Mattole Valley, in Humboldt County, northern California. Somewhat bewildered by what to do about the boy, he takes him next door to Bow Farm, inhabited by an eccentric band of individualists who try to live off the unforgiving land. Earth Mother Melody is happy to have the boy and begins to raise Wrecker as her own child. Also populating the farm are Willow, who’s attracted to Len and eventually begins an affair with him; Johnny Appleseed, who becomes something of an environmental terrorist; and Ruth, an older woman who becomes a grandmother-figure to Wrecker. Meanwhile, Wrecker’s mother, Lisa Fay, is working out her sentence in the penitentiary and keeping faith that eventually she’ll be reunited with her son. Melody’s fear is that her role of adoptive parent is not sanctioned with any piece of paper, so she has no legal claim on the child. We watch the stages of Wrecker’s growth from a taciturn and skittish child to a more voluble and less isolated adult. The adults form an extended family for Wrecker and in the process lurch their way through the awkward stages of parenthood.
Wood (Arroyo, 2001) moves her characters gracefully through trying times, both cultural and personal.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60819-280-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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