A linked set of modern parables, some more successful than others.
In Schulte’s debut novel, a dying man shares lessons about faith and life with his grandson.
The story begins in the hospice room of a wise old man who’s accepted his impending death. When an attendant says that they want to make his space more “cheery and comfortable,” he merely responds, “Bah. One should spend his last days in reflection, not pleasure. We should embrace the end, not avoid it.” When his grandson, Kevin, comes to visit, he tells him how his own life was powerfully transformed by embracing Christianity. He also gives Kevin a set of numbered notebooks in a briefcase. In each, Kevin finds a single story. At first, he believes the books to be journals, but he quickly realizes that the main character of the first tale—a man who becomes consumed by greed—doesn’t resemble his grandfather at all. “No, it never happened,” the old man explains. “But…I imagined how my life might go.” Kevin reads the remaining tales in his grandparent’s presence, and each introduces a new alter ego and addresses a different theme: “Wealth,” “Career,” “Pleasure,” “Shame,” “Family,” and others. His grandfather takes on the personae of a lonely prisoner in isolation, a hotshot businessman who loses all his material possessions, and even a young man who’s committed murder; the stories aren’t based on real events, but they do draw on lessons that the elderly man learned throughout his life. Readers may find that the novel’s central conceit—stories of roads not taken—offers an intriguing variation on the idea of a deathbed confession, but in practice, the stories tend to blur together. They rush to drive home lessons about faith, and several (such as “Wealth,” “Career,” and “Pleasure”) deal with similar themes that might have been more powerful if they were presented in a single story. There are standout chapters, however; “Shame,” for example, delivers a truly moving depiction of schoolyard bullying, and “Family” arrives at a unique and unexpected moral: “Family is important but not worth dedicating one’s life to.”
A linked set of modern parables, some more successful than others.Pub Date: April 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-973616-78-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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