An undeniably audacious, if self-consciously Southwest Gothic debut that fans of Cormac McCarthy should adore.
In Froderberg’s highly stylized, uniquely voiced first novel, a young bride’s growing disillusionment about her marriage coincides with the drought plaguing her Arizona community.
Seventeen-year-old Girl, whose briefly sketched, quickly forgotten parents have left her pretty much on her own, marries Son, the heir to a successful rancher, after a short, passionate courtship. Son’s mother and father, called Rose and Rose’s Daddy, are loving in-laws and their ranch was a paradise of fecundity in its time, as Rose’s Daddy explains in elaborate recitations. But a drought has set in, both physical and spiritual. Without water, the local economy is in a tailspin. The ranch sits above an aquifer, and in the past Rose’s Daddy has made a fortune selling off water. But now he is struggling. Son is soon leaving Girl to drink and entertain other women, in particular the daughter of his father’s longtime mistress Pearl. Deeply religious Rose withers away and dies, but not before she’s introduced Girl to Padre, a New Age minister. Son’s father sinks into a deep depression, ultimately committing suicide. Son’s mourning takes the form of profound anger and even wilder carousing. Girl seeks counsel from Padre, on whom she develops a profound and requited crush. She moves off the farm and stays briefly with Pearl’s father while Pearl and her mother are “north,” where Pearl is preparing to give birth, possibly to Son’s child, an irony since Girl has an abortion. But Son begs Girl to return to him and together they prepare for the big rodeo. The church burns down, and Padre moves on to another parish. Son is thrown from his horse, sustaining major neurogenic injuries that leave him with a ruined face and completely dependent on Girl. And then the rains come. Realism is not the point in Girl’s elliptical narrative, told in a vernacular that mixes biblical grandiosity and down-home grit.
An undeniably audacious, if self-consciously Southwest Gothic debut that fans of Cormac McCarthy should adore.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-09877-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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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