A deeply political novel that tackles the long history of struggle in Israel.
A debut work that dramatizes the state of Israel and the plight of the Palestinians.
Hanna’s complex, densely written novel puts a light layer of fiction over what’s essentially an extended history of the modern state of Israel and a condemnation of that country’s government. The book presents readers with characters such as Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Michal Zeldin, who tries to stand against what he calls Israel’s “unethical use of archeology,” reiterating the novel’s frequent claims that Israel has no documented historical claim to any of the territory it occupies; and investigative journalist David Reisner, who’s looking into the titular Hiramic Brotherhood, a secret society within the ranks of Israel’s Masonic community. The Brotherhood seeks to illegally tunnel beneath East Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, in order to build a Third Temple on one of Islam’s holiest sites. Along the way, characters talk about the Illuminati and the Freemasons, and there are tantalizing feints at a thriller-style plot. As the novel goes on, Hanna also details the long, complicated history of the Zionist cause, especially its present form in the 20th century. He takes his readers through two world wars and many other national disruptions. But the book’s main emphasis is on facts, not fiction: Hanna is intent on laying out a case against Israel, against the powerful special interest lobby called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and against a media which is “serving the interests of the Anglo-Zionist Political Corporate Military Industrial Empire.” Indeed, the book’s final 100 pages comprise detailed accounts of the region from 2009 to 2013. As a result, the thriller elements likely won’t be the reason why readers keep turning pages. They’ll more likely be interested in the book’s dissection of Israeli policies, and what the author sees as a continuous annulment of Palestinian civil rights. Some of the book’s contempt for current politicians and world leaders can be off-puttingly raw (such as a reference to “Barack ‘Uncle Tom’ Obama”). However, the bulk of the book makes a readable argument.
A deeply political novel that tackles the long history of struggle in Israel.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1909425910
Page Count: 504
Publisher: Spiffing Covers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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