A dense philosophical work that delivers striking moments and some hazy prose.
A debut philosophical book examines life in modern times.
Living explains at the outset of this short yet extensive work that readers have opened something with “nontraditional writing and a peculiar name.” While the latter part of the statement is immediately evident, the former becomes obvious the instant readers bear down on the content. This series opener is organized into “Paths,” marked “Philosophical,” “Psychological,” “Political,” and “Lyrical”; each features musings, dialogues, and allusions to everything from World War II and Vatican City to human cloning. While the views of others are incorporated, the volume focuses on the author’s meandering thought process. On the topic of gay marriage (in the “Psychological Path”), Living asserts: “I hope it would be a share of thoughts why today’s idea about male marriage works like a magnet to moot concepts.” On the subject of the death of one’s parents (part of the “Philosophical Path”), there is the revelation that “even if you are a hot believer in God, today like a first time in life you show zealous protest by differing this death.” Understanding what the author means by such comments can prove a challenge. Although context clues provide some clarity, the writing style creates a host of difficulties. For example, the line “It’s like people’s millennium tradition: when the important novelty gets closer, no one afraid” is a puzzle. What is the “people’s millennium tradition”? What is an “important novelty” and is it true that no one is afraid when it gets closer? This is not to say that the work lacks potency. Crime and punishment are deftly explored with the idea that “if somebody likes to see punitive actions, there may be many reasons, but he would never agree that he does it for emotional balance.” A rendition of one man’s experience working in a cleanup operation following the 9/11 attacks in New York City is quite touching, particularly with the image of an area “blanket-covered by the black glass up to the fifty-fourth floor facing Towers Place.” The great hurdle for readers will be to separate such astuteness from more confounding commentary. Doing so provides plenty of remarkable takeaways, though this sifting is far from an easy task.
A dense philosophical work that delivers striking moments and some hazy prose.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-975982-71-3
Page Count: 241
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.
Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Superb stylist L’Amour returns (End of the Drive, 1997, etc.), albeit posthumously, with ten stories never seen before in book form—and narrated in his usual hard-edged, close-cropped sentences, jutting up from under fierce blue skies. This is the first of four collections of L’Amour material expected from Bantam, edited by his daughter Angelique, featuring an eclectic mix of early historicals and adventure stories set in China, on the high seas, and in the boxing ring, all drawing from the author’s exploits as a carnival barker and from his mysterious and sundry travels. During this period, L’Amour was trying to break away from being a writer only of westerns. Also included is something of an update on Angelique’s progress with her father’s biography: i.e., a stunningly varied list of her father’s acquaintances from around the world whom she’d like to contact for her research. Meanwhile, in the title story here, a missionary’s daughter who crashes in northern Asia during the early years of the Sino-Japanese War is taken captive by a nomadic leader and kept as his wife for 15 years, until his death. When a plane lands, she must choose between taking her teenaged son back to civilization or leaving him alone with the nomads. In “By the Waters of San Tadeo,” set on the southern coast of Chile, Julie Marrat, whose father has just perished, is trapped in San Esteban, a gold field surrounded by impassable mountains, with only one inlet available for anyone’s escape. “Meeting at Falmouth,” a historical, takes place in January 1794 during a dreadful Atlantic storm: “Volleys of rain rattled along the cobblestones like a scattering of broken teeth.” In this a notorious American, unnamed until the last paragraph, helps Talleyrand flee to America. A master storyteller only whets the appetite for his next three volumes.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10963-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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