by Tony D’Souza ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2006
Africa may be ultimately unknowable for the author, but this nonfiction novel, his debut, represents a thrilling partial...
An exceptional account of West African village life, written with enormous affection and you-are-there immediacy.
Jack Diaz is a white Chicagoan in his mid-20s, working in Ivory Coast for an aid organization. After training in Abidjan in the Christian South, he is sent to a village in the exploited Muslim North. Religious tensions will eventually erupt into civil war. In the village, he is assigned a mentor, Mamadou, who will be invaluable in teaching Jack tribal customs (he already has a smattering of their language, Worodougou). Underneath their Muslim veneer, the villagers believe in genies, witchcraft and, above all, the ancestors. Jack earns their respect by farming with them and shooting francolins, crop-destroying wild chickens. D’Souza’s work reads like a memoir rather than a novel, but his story needs the freedom of the novel, especially when it comes to sex. “If you don’t have sex, you’ll get sick,” warns Mamadou. The chief offers him a girl but she’s in her mid-teens—too young. There’s the beautiful Mazatou, but she’s a tease. There’s the equally beautiful Djamilla, a Peul (nomadic cattle herders). He’s granted permission to marry her, but loses his nerve. It’s all very tricky. He finds relief with a hooker in Abidjan and is fatalistic about getting AIDS, though later he launches an AIDS education project. The most troubling episode involves another village beauty whose husband lives in Abidjan. They sleep together; the mother-in-law, furious, sets genies on Jack, who practices his own, more powerful magic; the mother-in-law dies. In immersing himself in witchcraft, has Jack become truly African, or is he still a long-stay tourist? The war begins. Jack and his fellow aid workers experience a dangerous trip to the relative safety of Abidjan.
Africa may be ultimately unknowable for the author, but this nonfiction novel, his debut, represents a thrilling partial discovery.Pub Date: April 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-15-101145-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
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BOOK REVIEW
by Tony D’Souza
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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