Revered in his homeland as a delicate observer of life in Osaka, Miyamoto has been little known in English until now....
Epistolary novel detailing the gradual enlightenment of a divorced couple, the noted Japanese author’s U.S. debut.
Aki and Yasuaki’s marriage at first seemed blessed. Not only was it a love match, he was the heir apparent to her father’s successful construction firm. But Yasuaki succumbed to his obsession with a former schoolmate and nightclub hostess. When he was found in a hotel room, survivor of a botched murder-suicide, Aki’s father insisted on a divorce. Now, ten years later, the estranged pair’s paths cross at a mountain resort where unhappily remarried Aki has taken her handicapped son. Yasuaki initiates a correspondence, and the two pour out their emotions. Since Yasuaki almost died at his lover’s hands, he’s done little except get involved in bad business ventures, take out bad loans and hide out from angry gangsters. Things begin to look up when his girlfriend, Reiko, a supermarket cashier with a savings account, enlists his help with a promising plan to sell brochures to beauty shops. When a thug shows up at Reiko’s door to collect on one of Yasuaki’s debts, she pays it off with most of her savings, indenturing but also anchoring him. Aki, meanwhile, decides to let her current husband, Katsunuma, go and concentrate on raising her son, who is showing signs of improvement. Miyamoto’s gentle touch with these well-meaning and generally honorable characters lends subtle drama to his treatise on loss.
Revered in his homeland as a delicate observer of life in Osaka, Miyamoto has been little known in English until now. Readers will want more translations, and soon.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2005
ISBN: 0-8112-1633-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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