Whimsy and wit float through these stories like fairy dust, and while the enchantment sometimes has a mechanical quality,...
Ten clever tales in a philosophical vein, often delicately surreal, from novelist Brownrigg (The Metaphysical Touch, 1999), who muses on the place of women in every capacity from makers of the world’s wonders to givers of parties.
The first story, “Amazon,” is perhaps the least effective, presenting a nebulous image of a pair of female wonder-workers responsible for everything from the pyramids to the Golden Gate Bridge; the older finally retires to let her assistant take over. Subsequent stories, though, offer in detail situations both more substantial and more profound. “The Bird Chick” tells of a woman who cares for the birds in a city park and speaks to them, coming to have such power over them that she can direct them in a performance of Hamlet, a performance that changes the lives of those who see it. There are other strong links between woman and the natural world: “The Broad from Abroad” is a visitor to the city who speaks of her male friends Henry, Joseph, and Bob—each one a forest—with great fondness, even as she indicates a preference for city life because there she can talk and be talked to; and “Mistress of Many Moons” is interviewed about her romances and intimacy with the masters of the night sky. More melancholy and down-to-earth, perhaps, are “She Who Caught Buses,” about a librarian whose prejudices toward a certain group of people, the Chranks, are explained by a childhood experience in which they sank to the bottom of a pond to find the treasure she had yearned for; and the party story, “Mars Needs Women,” about a caterer, confronted with a bash to which no one came, decides to move to Mars.
Whimsy and wit float through these stories like fairy dust, and while the enchantment sometimes has a mechanical quality, mostly it can bring about wonder and delight.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-27289-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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
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