An imaginative romance of shipwreck, survival, and philosophical adventuring by the formidably learned author of The Name of the Rose (1983), Foucault's Pendulum (1989), and, most recently, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays (1994). In 1643, highborn Roberto della Griva, a soldier who has fought in the Thirty Years' War and subsequently been sent on a secret mission to the Antipodes, is shipwrecked in the South Pacific somewhere near the Fiji and Solomon Islands. He saves himself by clambering aboard another shipthe abandoned Daphne. Finding in its hold sufficient provisions and supplies, and gradually recovering his strength and his wits, Roberto records the events of his past lifehis sheltered boyhood in Italy, confused exposure to the temporal claims of political allegiance, love of learning for its own sake, and sobering experience as devoted postulant to his scarcely approachable love objects. The tale of Roberto then is juxtaposed against his cautious exploration of the Daphne now, climaxing in the surprising fulfillment of his fears that the ``intruder'' whose companion presence he suspects may be the ``evil twin brother'' he has always had fantasies of. Simultaneously, a nameless omniscient narrator summarizes the record Roberto has left behind, ruefully assessing the latter's amazed discovery that the complexity of creation proves all things possibleincluding the contrary lives led by our alternative selves. Eco tests his readers severely, especially in detailed considerations of the mechanics of navigation and ``the mystery of longitude.'' Yet even this novel's denser arcana are embodied in vivid characters speaking lively and funny dialogue. Prominent among Roberto's reality instructors are his genially blasphemous and metaphysically-minded father, inventor of an Aristotelian Memory Machine; his aphorism-spouting comrade-in-arms Saint-Savin; and the alarmingly polymathic scientist-priest, Father Caspar Wanderdrossel. Though weighted here and there by the longueurs of whimsy, this is on balance an intriguing and entertaining theoretical rompa kind of Borgesian Robinson Crusoe. (First printing of 300,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-100151-0
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy.
Two mysterious quests form the core of Murakami’s absorbing seventh novel, whose encyclopedic breadth recalls his earlier successes, A Wild Sheep Chase (1989) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997).
In the first of two parallel narratives, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura drops out of school and leaves the Tokyo home he shares with his artist-sculptor father, to seek the mother and sister who left them when Kafka was four years old. Traveling to the small town of Takamatsu, he spends his days at a free library, reconnects with a resourceful older girl who becomes his de facto mentor, and begins to reenact the details of a mysterious “incident” from more than 60 years ago. In 1944, a group of 16 schoolchildren inexplicably “lost consciousness” during an outing in a rural mountain area. Only one of them, Satoru Nakata, emerged from the incident damaged—and it’s he who, decades later, becomes the story’s second protagonist: a childlike, scarcely articulate, mentally challenged sexagenarian who is supported by a possibly guilty government’s “sub city” and possesses the ability to hold conversations (charmingly funny ones) with cats. With masterly skill and considerable subtlety, Murakami gradually plaits together the experiences and fates of Kafka and Nakata, underscoring their increasingly complex symbolic significance with several dazzling subplots and texts: a paternal prophecy echoing the Oedipus legend (from which Kafka also seeks escape); a faux-biblical occurrence in which things that ought not to be in the skies are raining down from them; the bizarre figures of a whore devoted to Hegel’s philosophy; and an otherworldly pimp whose sartorial affectations cloak his true menacing nature; a ghostly forest into which Russian soldiers inexplicably disappear; and—in glancing allusions to Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki—a clever homage to that author’s beguiling 1905 fantasy, I Am a Cat. Murakami is of course himself an immensely reader-friendly novelist, and never has he offered more enticing fare than this enchantingly inventive tale.
A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4366-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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