One of the finest novels of this century.
Never before available in English, a masterpiece of the picaresque by the Nobel laureate who is arguably the greatest novelist in modern Hebrew.
Fifty-five years after this epic tale’s initial publication, Harshav provides an eloquent translation, successfully capturing Agnon’s carefully nuanced and bitter humor. A nonentity, a schlemiel named Isaac Kumer, arrives in Palestine as one of the dreamy-eyed pioneers of the Second Aliyah, the wave of Jewish immigrants who, impelled by Zionist rhetoric, came to the barren precincts of the Holy Land late in the first decade of the 20th century. Isaac, like his fellows, wants to work the land, to walk behind a plow making a desert blossom, but the hapless, feckless young Galician ends up as an itinerant sign painter instead. Over the course of the novel he drifts between women, ideologies, and influences, a sort of filial figure "adopted'' by an entire range of Zionists, would-be socialists, and rabbis Orthodox and un-, not to mention the extraordinary Sonya, who introduces him to love and loss. Then Kumer, a holy fool of sorts, engages in a single act of childish horseplay, painting the words crazy dog on the side of a mongrel stray, that sets in motion the forces of his own destruction and simultaneously gives the work a daring, unpredictable second narrative focus. Agnon tells the story in a wildly shifting kaleidoscope of plotlines, syntaxes, tenses, and voices, with scathing satirical barbs that spare almost no one, including the author himself, leaping from third person to first-person plural to include his entire generation in Isaac's failings and foibles. Harshav's special achievement: she conveys brilliantly all of Agnon's impetuous leaps, poetic digressions, and wry satire (an achievement all the more admirable because she matches it in her translation of Amos Oz's essays on Agnon, p. 362).
One of the finest novels of this century.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-691-00972-4
Page Count: 652
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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