Soulful on a subliminal seafloor.
Magic-drawing-pad paragraphs from psychotropic child genius Robbins (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, 2000, etc.).
What can a poor reviewer do when attempting to skimble-skamble through that celebrated cerebellum in search of storyline when each page fades immediately? Might Robbins not review himself and quote heavily from a hairy bonfire of half-naked similes, the kind that leave a girl mellowed out, disrobed, lustful, and movie-going on the living-room rug? And yet, something serious, a playfulness and sense of fun, deep-surging in the lingual circuits, rises from the verbal infinitudes whispering from Robbins’s midbrain, a heroic antitoxin to the electronic wasteland of sitcoms and feel-good flicks. Using his outsized scrotum as a parachute, Tanuki, a potbellied, nearly tailless East Asian wild dog that walks on its hind legs, falls to earth from the Other World. After much success with country girls, Tanuki fails to seduce cosmopolite femmes and so spends a winter shape-shifting into human form. Now incognito, thieving Tanuki enters Kyoto—and so begin Candide-like adventures in counter-Zen philosophy: Tanuki’s philosophical duels with Kitsune the fox, his marriage to Miho, and his fathering of daughter Kazu. Centuries later, Tanuki’s descendants turn up in Seattle. Then, too, we meet American MIAs who prefer Asia to the States; Miss Ginger Sweetie, a Bangkok whore studying comparative literature; the guitar-playing Dickie Goldwire; godawful Elvis impersonator Elvisuit, who sometimes sings at Patpong’s Cherry Bomb Club; and Madame Ko and her tumbling tanukis in the Southeast Asian circus. All leads to an autumnal farewell: “All across the clearing, the dying grass and sun were practically the same shade of yellow. Last-minute shoppers crowded the pollen parlors, and every other flower-head drooped from bee-weight . . . Already rubbed red by nights of foreplay, boughs, each leaf alert, awaited the transformative ejaculation of frost.”
Soulful on a subliminal seafloor.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-80332-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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