by Vinita Hampton Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2006
Lambasted with misery, readers may well miss the intended message of Christian transcendence.
Tedious domestic saga chronicling the demise of an Iowa farm family.
After spending several weeks in a mental hospital for suicidal depression, 43-year-old Mack Barnes is coming home to his farmhouse near the town of Beulah. The stoicism practiced in traditional farm communities has not equipped anyone to deal with this unsettling development. Mack’s wife Jodie, who works in the local school’s cafeteria, is ambivalent about his homecoming; she feels that she has been blamed for his bouts of erratic behavior, and she worries about protecting their two children. Dutiful daughter Kenzie, 14, is veering perilously toward Christian fundamentalism. Her 17-year-old brother, Young Taylor—named after the deceased Barnes patriarch who died ten years earlier in a questionable machine accident—dresses in lugubrious black garments and wears creepy makeup. Widowed grandmother Rita, who now lives in Beulah, won’t discuss the suspicious details of husband Taylor’s accident. She still grieves over the loss of the working farm: though Mack tenuously inhabits the homestead, he makes his living as a mechanic; the portion of land inherited by his younger brother Alex is long gone, lost as he descended into alcoholism. Mack’s deep-seated issues require medication that ruins his sex life with his wife. Jodie, recognizing that he’s “still fighting battles that have little to do with her,” finds a willing admirer at school and embarks on a satisfying affair. Meanwhile, no one monitors the comings and goings of the children, who slip into social vagrancy. The author creates strong, understated characterizations and a sense of enormous drama as secrets periodically erupt. But Wright (Velma Still Cooks in Leeway, not reviewed, etc.) could have been more selective with the details of her ponderous tragedy, which unravels in interminable increments.
Lambasted with misery, readers may well miss the intended message of Christian transcendence.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-079080-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
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by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942
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
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by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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