Ambitious writing, but, for the reader, more effortful than rewarding.
From poet and writer Svoboda (A Drink Called Paradise, 1999), a novella and 14 small and usually gnomic stories in a collection that has some moments of allure but puzzles and poses more than it stirs.
In the stories, Svoboda has a way of setting aside the credible in exchange either for a highly oblique way of telling or an archness in tone that then becomes what sustains the piece—as in "Sundress," about a derelict but highly glib couple who pretend to be house-sitters, or "Electricity" (about self-involved and uncaring parents), a complexly daring but unmoving piece. At times, the self-consciousness simply overwhelms what could in fact be moving, as in "Doll," about a brother and sister in childhood; the less believable "Cave Life," about two Flamenco dancers beaten down by a snowy winter; or "Psychic," a kind of trick O. Henry tale. Yet at some moments the power of real life does rise up out of Svoboda's words, as in "Petrified Woman," about a mother tyrannizing her grown daughter, or "Party Girl," a pitch-perfect rendering of teenaged girls at a slumber party. The title novella, filling something over half the volume, tries hard to lift emotion up out of squalor, but, by and large, the squalor wins. Having previously been institutionalized, Svoboda's narrator now lives in a trailer court that seems almost the pinnacle of grotesquerie and ruin. Semi-wild kids run around, the narrator (known as "the trash lady") survives on cat food and hot dogs, and in the trailers around her, when TV isn't being watched, there are sex, threats, beatings, and, before end, will be torture, madness, and murder. The trailer girl, trying to help just one lost victim, observes all as best she can, a kind of parallel to the herd of cows that gaze from the other side of the gulch.
Ambitious writing, but, for the reader, more effortful than rewarding.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58243-085-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in...
Huzzah! Martin (The Ice Dragon, 2014, etc.) delivers just what fans have been waiting for: stirring tales of the founding of the Targaryen line.
Duncan—Dunk for short—has his hapless moments. He’s big, nearly gigantic, “hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen.” Uncertain of himself, clumsy, and alone in the world, he has every one of the makings of a hero, if only events will turn in that direction. They do, courtesy of a tiny boy who steals into the “hedge knight” Dunk’s life and eventually reveals a name to match that of Ser Duncan the Tall—an altogether better name, at that, than Duncan of Flea Bottom would have been. Egg, as the squire calls himself, has a strange light about him, as if he will be destined to go on to better things, as indeed he will. Reminiscent of a simpler Arthur Rackham, the illustrations capture that light, as they do the growing friendship between Dunk and Egg—think Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues, if your knowledge of basketball matches your interest in fantasy. This being Martin, that friendship will not be without its fraught moments, its dangers and double crosses and knightly politics. There are plenty of goopily violent episodes as well, from jousts (“this time Lord Leo Tyrell aimed his point so expertly he ripped the Grey Lion’s helm cleanly off his head”) to medieval torture (“Egg…used the hat to fan away the flies. There were hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the still, hot air.”). Throughout, Martin delivers thoughtful foreshadowing of the themes and lineages that will populate his Ice and Fire series, in which Egg, it turns out, is much less fragile than he seems.
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in addition, they succeed in making fans want more—and with luck, Martin will oblige them with more of these early yarns.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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