Strongly written and intelligent evocation, in well-rendered settings, of the darker side of love and friendship.
An absorbing and disquieting tale of love, friendship, and betrayal: debut fiction written by Australian author Johnson during her first pregnancy (see her memoir, A Better Woman, p. 160).
The story is set mostly in 1980s Hong Kong as the lives of three characters intersect as each struggles to find fulfillment in their otherwise successful lives. First, there are artist Rachel Gallagher and her friend and fellow artist Anne-Louise Buchan, who meet while working for a fashion magazine in Sydney. Anne-Louise is outrageous, daring, and ambitious, while Rachel is timid and conventional—“an acceptor,” not a “striver” like Anne-Louise. When the two have saved enough money, they head for Europe, determined to become real artists. But Anne-Louise becomes manic and suffers a breakdown as she tries to paint what she believes is a great insight into life; after Anne-Louise recovers, Rachel returns to Australia and becomes a prizewinning artist. Eventually, Anne-Louise moves to Hong Kong to work for an international organization, and there she meets the third member of the triangle, handsome Martin Bannister, just as troubled and driven as Anne-Louise. A coolheaded money trader and financial whiz, he is far less sure-footed in his personal life: he was in his 20s before he met his father for the first time; his unstable mother abandoned him as a baby (then reclaimed him some years later, after she had remarried); and Martin himself is divorced. He’s also a sadist, finding sexual release in abusing prostitutes. During a reunion with Anne-Louise in Hong Kong, Rachel learns that her erstwhile friend is in love with Martin, and later meets him. But Anne-Louise’s old demons return, and Rachel, after seeking Martin’s assistance, does something with unforgivable and terrible consequences for both her and Anne-Louise.
Strongly written and intelligent evocation, in well-rendered settings, of the darker side of love and friendship.Pub Date: April 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-3777-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
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
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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