An unusual and intriguing book, and a welcome introduction to the work of a neglected 20th-century master.
Scholarly ambition encounters unforgiving factuality in this previously untranslated 1966 novel from the Dutch author (1921–95) whose edgy experimental fiction includes The Tears of the Acacias and The Dark Room of Damocles.
Narrator Alfred Issendorf is a 25-year-old geology student who joins a scientific expedition to northern Norway (Finnmark), afire with dreams of establishing his reputation, ideally by discovering “a mineral that would be named after me: Issendorfite.” Alfred’s determination to prove his professor and mentor’s thesis—that craters found in the earth of the remote area just north of Lapland were caused by fallen meteors—quickly founders. Contacts lack vital information; promised aerial photographs never materialize; Alfred’s watch and compass malfunction; and mosquitoes plague his every step. Hermans deftly connects Alfred’s hunger for success with memories of his tense relationship with his mother (a renowned literary critic who doesn’t actually read the books she writes about—take that, reviewers!) and inchoate memories of his father, a botanist who died from a fall into a mountain crevasse when his son was seven. The narrative of Alfred’s ordeal—which is beautifully detailed and consummately suspenseful—is also nicely varied by episodic scenes among the protagonist and his three Norwegian fellow travelers: easygoing Arne, unimaginative plodder Mikkelsen and effusive autodidact Qvigstad, a fount of eccentric information who never stops talking. And Alfred’s habit of measuring himself against storied heroes of exploration and discovery provides a firm layer of irony—marred intermittently by numerous reiterations of his gathering fear that “I will have achieved nothing. I will have survived, that’s all.” Such fatalism is both confirmed and tempered by the lucid conclusion, in which a “gift from heaven” decisively completes his journey.
An unusual and intriguing book, and a welcome introduction to the work of a neglected 20th-century master.Pub Date: May 10, 2007
ISBN: 1-58567-583-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
