A very pale knockoff of James Dickey, with ponderous narration taking us through the obvious and predictable story at a...
Sluggish thriller by Johnson (Six Crooked Highways, 2000, etc.) about a camping trip that goes wrong when an unhappy family runs into a gang of small-time thugs.
Max and Rachel Geist, separated for some time, are trying to make a fresh start in their marriage. As a part of this domestic reconciliation, Max decides to take their teenaged son David and his seven-year-old sister Janie on a camping trip in the northern Minnesota wilderness. Meanwhile, a very different outing is being planned by four woebegone meat packers. At the urging of his sister Carol, Jack Carpenter, a manager at the Dysart plant in Austin, Minnesota, agrees to take her husband Stacey and his pals Munson and Penry on a hunting trip through the same forest. It’s not exactly a vacation: Stacey has been charged with assault and battery for beating up a Mexican immigrant who works at the plant, and Carol is afraid that the man may die in the hospital, leaving her husband to face charges of manslaughter or worse. So they all head up near the border, ready to slip Stacey across to Canada in case he needs to flee the country. Although he agreed to the plan, Jack is suspicious of his brother-in-law, especially since he’s discovered that Stacey and his pals are involved in a scam that has lifted thousands of dollars of merchandise from the plant over the last year. For their part, Stacey and Penry detest Jack as a stooge of the bosses and resent his promoting a Mexican worker over them. They also suspect he’s on to their scheme. There’s bad blood all around, and things get worse when a chance encounter with Max Geist and his kids turns into a minor scuffle that leads to major disaster. Remember Deliverance? City folks should stay out of the woods.
A very pale knockoff of James Dickey, with ponderous narration taking us through the obvious and predictable story at a snail’s pace.Pub Date: March 9, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-60964-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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