A consummate dramatization of the impenetrable mysteriousness of other people’s lives: convincing proof that de Loo is one...
The ordeal of Hungarian Jewry during WWII, survivor guilt, and the unbridgeable distances between people yearning to connect—these are the major motifs sounded in this brisk, elegiac second US appearance by the Dutch author of The Twins (2000).
A virtuosic juxtaposition of different time periods and clashing viewpoints, the tale begins with its female narrator’s declaration that, having just buried her father, “I am lying in bed with his son.” She is Kata Roszsavölgyi, the daughter of a celebrated Hungarian composer who had survived the war in Holland, hidden in the home of Ida Flinck, the Dutchwoman who became both his lover and the mistress of a Nazi officer. De Loo’s flexible narrative reaches backward not only to Kata’s girlhood in Budapest, but also to her forebears’ experiences, as recounted by her uncle Miksa: chiefly, (his brother) her father’s “escape” from Hungary to study music, and thus evade the fate their parents and sister met; more generally, the story of a proud culture’s swift annihilation by Hitler’s armies. And, as in The Twins, de Loo offers a stunning coincidence, as Kata falls in love with Stefan, a suave womanizing student—until she meets his mother: Ida Flinck. Is Stefan the son of the German officer? Or, as Kata knows in her bones, of her reclusive, emotionless (and presumably guilt-ridden) father? Ironies multiply and unanswerable questions press down with the weight of years and generations, as these characters’ several stories intersect and collide, and the tale moves swiftly toward its wrenching climax, with Kata and Stefan burying “their” father, their love, and perhaps all hope of ever knowing what they are to each other—and even who they are.
A consummate dramatization of the impenetrable mysteriousness of other people’s lives: convincing proof that de Loo is one of Europe’s most accomplished novelists.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56947-316-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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