Stories of subtle fantasy with an open-ended feel, as if from a novelist unaccustomed to the short form. Repeat characters...
Five stories—and two arguable novellas that read like historical fables—of the northern California so familiar to the author’s father.
“Sing Fat and the Imperial Duchess of Woo” is the longest of these at nearly a hundred pages: a Chinese man comes to the US just in time for the Gold Rush, spends eight years repanning the discarded dirt of miners for the residual gold dust, becomes apprentice to an apothecary, falls in love, then sets off on a journey through an unexplored California only to have his betrothed die, with the result that he instead marries the Imperial Duchess of Woo—a cat. Breadth of experience is clearly more important than depth in Steinbeck’s pieces. In “The Night Guide,” a half-Indian boy with special powers via his ancestry rescues his mother from an apocryphal storm, while “The Wool-Gatherer” is a borderline YA fable about a boy who sees the Big Sur Bear, a beast the size of a barn with the reputation of a dragon; proving that the experience was true becomes a kind of Holy Grail quest, though the search bears no real rhetorical fruit. “Blind Luck” is another near-novella about a young man’s descent into the seaman’s life, and in “An Unbecoming Grace,” a doctor’s house-calls through the historical Monterey become a tour of community, of history, and of hidden crime. The marketing behind this debut collection invites the natural father-son comparison, yet it’s almost as though the younger Steinbeck is afraid to try for the grandeur of the elder, as though the land he is pulled toward is out of his jurisdiction, somehow already drawn.
Stories of subtle fantasy with an open-ended feel, as if from a novelist unaccustomed to the short form. Repeat characters are perhaps a hint of the novel already underway. (N.B.: The year 2002 marks the centennial of John Steinbeck’s birth.)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45576-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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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