Brilliant, riveting, conscience-driven political novel: rank it with the greats.
Australia’s Keneally (Office of Innocence, 2003, etc., etc.) offers the most significant American novel of some time, much as Graham Greene in 1955 with The Quiet American.
The setting isn’t Saigon but the capital city of a Middle Eastern state tyrannized by “Great Uncle” and his secret police, the “Overguard.” Any doubts that Iraq is meant dissipate quickly as we learn that poison gas was used in a recent war (against the “Others”), that Great Uncle’s nation is under Western economic sanctions that cripple the poor and hurt all—or that one of Great Uncle’s sons shot dead two leaders of the national soccer team after they’d lost the World Cup. Desolate and corrupt, both city and nation are bled dry, oppressed by tyranny from within and sanctions from without—and Keneally brings it all to life with a gritty, uncompromising vividness equal to Greene’s Saigon or Winston Smith’s London. The central figure is Alan Sheriff, author of a highly praised book of stories drawn from his experience as a young soldier in the war against the Others. Indeed, life holds promise for Alan, whose first novel is almost finished, with already a lot of money in the bank from it. But calamity visits when an aneurism kills Sarah, Alan’s beloved and nationally famous actress-wife. In his grief, he deep-sixes his computer, then buries with Sarah the only remaining copy of his novel (it was for her, after all). Soon afterward, a summons: Alan is arrested, blindfolded, and taken to an audience with Great Uncle himself, who gives Alan an offer he can’t refuse: one month to write an emotion-arousing novel to be published in the West under Great Uncle’s name to stir up world opposition to the sanctions, all this before the coming G-7 meetings in Montreal. And so Alan wrestles with time, conscience, grief, desire, despair, and the blank page in ways no reader—certainly no American reader—will easily forget.
Brilliant, riveting, conscience-driven political novel: rank it with the greats.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51146-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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