Fabulist elements, lyrical prose, and a chorus of narrative voices give this slim novel depth and breadth.
Old family resentments build along with a storm off the coast of Colombia.
González's (In the Beginning Was the Sea, 2015) latest novel to be translated into English is set in a Colombian seaside village, where an arrogant old man runs the Hotel Playamar with help from his adult twin sons. Despite a storm brewing, the stubborn father decides the three of them will spend a day and a night at sea fishing. The twins are Mario, the more volatile and practical, and Javier, the more even-tempered and bookish. Though there is no love lost between the twins and their father, the two do love their mother, Nora, “a total nutcase” who hallucinates and hears voices. Nora's condition has been worsening since her husband brought his young mistress and infant son to live at the hotel. Time moves forward hour by hour as noted in section titles, from Saturday, 4:00 a.m. to Sunday, 6:00 a.m. On shore, the mother begins to suffer a breakdown and the hotel guests are swept up in her hallucination. At sea, the threat of the storm mounts and the men find almost a biblical bounty of fish. Throughout, the narrative shifts between first- and close third-person, and a host of characters tell the tale. The many tourists of various ages and backgrounds show the contradictions in different characters’ perspectives. The father envisions himself a king while the twins see him as a dictator, and, from the tourists, we begin to see the dilapidated state of his kingdom. There is humor in the frequent revelation of self-delusions. There is also suspense as the storm—more interpersonal than weather-related—builds and breaks.
Fabulist elements, lyrical prose, and a chorus of narrative voices give this slim novel depth and breadth.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-939810-02-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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