Touching and honest, but unsatisfying all the same: Samuel’s monologue seems, not surprisingly, to be written more for the...
A somewhat lugubrious debut from French playwright Reza (the Tony Award–winning Art).
In the tradition of Mauriac, Reza has created an intensely interior work, essentially a long monologue by an old man who looks over the events of his life as he faces the prospect of death and eternity. Samuel, the narrator, is a Parisian Jew who spent most of his life in the garment trade and did quite well. He keeps an apartment in town but spends more of his time in the country, in the home of Nancy, his second wife. His daughter is married to a dutiful but unimaginative pharmacist, and they have a baby boy—the narrator’s only grandchild. Samuel’s son is on a “sabbatical” year abroad, wandering from Mombasa to Kuala Lumpur to God-knows-where, and Samuel addresses much of his meditation to him, wondering what he is going to do with his life and when he is going to find some direction. An avid gardener, Samuel meets Genevieve Abramowitz, an old friend, at a flower show in Paris one day and proceeds to spend the rest of the day with her. As they reminisce about old friends and lovers (this is Paris, after all), Genevieve tells him how she “killed” their mutual friend Leo Fench (who had been Genevieve’s lover) by dropping him for another man. Samuel, for his part, recalls a long affair he had with Marisa Botton, the wife of one of his clients in Rouen. Cantankerous, rude, and cheap, Samuel is not the sort who inspires love easily, but his long confession, although seemingly pointless at times, succeeds in humanizing him and opens his heart to a degree that one rarely finds in first-person narratives. By the end, he has become more sympathetic than one could have expected.
Touching and honest, but unsatisfying all the same: Samuel’s monologue seems, not surprisingly, to be written more for the stage than the page.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41087-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.
An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).
Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The mother of all presidential cover-ups is the centerpiece gimmick in this far-fetched thriller from first-novelist Baldacci, a Washington-based attorney. In the dead of night, while burgling an exurban Virginia mansion, career criminal Luther Whitney is forced to conceal himself in a walk-in closet when Christine Sullivan, the lady of the house, arrives in the bedroom he's ransacking with none other than Alan Richmond, President of the US. Through the one-way mirror, Luther watches the drunken couple engage in a bout of rough sex that gets out of hand, ending only when two Secret Service men respond to the Chief Executive's cries of distress and gun down the letter-opener-wielding Christy. Gloria Russell, Richmond's vaultingly ambitious chief of staff, orders the scene rigged to look like a break-in and departs with the still befuddled President, leaving Christy's corpse to be discovered at another time. Luther makes tracks as well, though not before being spotted on the run by agents from the bodyguard detail. Aware that he's shortened his life expectancy, Luther retains trusted friend Jack Graham, a former public defender, but doesn't tell him the whole story. When Luther's slain before he can be arraigned for Christy's murder, Jack concludes he's the designated fall guy in a major scandal. Meanwhile, little Gloria (together with two Secret Service shooters) hopes to erase all tracks that might lead to the White House. But the late Luther seems to have outsmarted her in advance with recurrent demands for hush money. The body count rises as Gloria's attack dogs and Jack search for the evidence cunning Luther's left to incriminate not only a venal Alan Richmond but his homicidal deputies. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper climax provides an unsurprising answer to the question of whether a US president can get away with murder. For all its arresting premise, an overblown and tedious tale of capital sins. (Film rights to Castle Rock; Book-of-the-Month selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-51996-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
