A little more variation from expectation would have been welcome. Still, a well-intended and welcome first effort.
Musicians can be a handful. Even folk musicians. That’s not news—but it’s news you can use, courtesy of Belcher’s modest debut.
“What the hell happened to Eli Page?” You might as well have a T-shirt made with the question emblazoned on both sides, for Eli Page, the dark heart of the story, is a bibulous, cantankerous, but beguiling troubadour whose soap-operatic life includes spells of Dylan-esque disappearance and Morrison-ian mayhem. Enter “John Wyeth of nowhere special,” as Eli dubs the young man who stage-manages him through what could have been a disastrous performance. It’s not exactly My Favorite Year, but if you’ve seen that wonderful film in a double feature with Inside Llewyn Davis, you’ll have some idea of the setup. Belcher enriches what in turn could have been an overly broad yarn with a more specific narrowing of the stage as Jack moves to Eli’s small town to help him work through his archives and memory banks in a “ghostwriting gig,” with some mentoring in the fine art of how to be a folkie on the side. Jack’s no schmo, but he’s a little hapless, and as he lands square into Eli’s messes he makes some of his own; as Eli grumbles, midway through the book, “You move to town, live with me, and start up with [the town cop’s] fiancée. That’s three strikes.” One wishes Belcher had a slightly more seasoned view of small-town life of the sort that Richard Russo and the late Kent Haruf so ably drew from; there’s not much that sets his leafy town apart from any other. And while a musician as nice and even-keeled as, say, Donovan probably wouldn’t fuel a good old conflict-driven story, and there’s plenty of conflict here, Eli rather too neatly checks all the boxes of what a dissolute, world-weary musician—and is there any other kind?—is supposed to be like.
A little more variation from expectation would have been welcome. Still, a well-intended and welcome first effort.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59051-746-8
Page Count: 407
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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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