A skillful tale that explores relationship nuances and redemption.
A United Nations civil servant recalls his complicated bond with a German friend and his Japanese violinist wife in this debut novel.
Mark Graham Sanders, a divorced U.N. human resources officer in his mid-40s, has a “fortuitous encounter” in 1999 while sketching in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which leads to his experiencing “that misty line” between love and friendship. Specifically, he meets a professional violinist named Yukari, the wife of Hans, a U.N. economist colleague. Mark is immediately attracted to her, and she seems drawn to him; she soon admits to Mark that she was contemplating leaving her husband after discovering that he’d had an affair. Yet the marriage continues on, aided, oddly, by their friendship with Mark. The trio enjoys many evenings of music and culture together and even discovers that their families were acquainted generations ago. As a pledge to their friendship, Mark and Hans plant blue roses in the U.N. garden, which also reflect the color of a dress that Yukari wears. After one intoxicating evening, Hans and Yukari sleep over at Mark’s apartment and conceive a child. The news of Yukari’s pregnancy arrives, however, just as Hans, frustrated in his career, decides to go on assignment in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mark gladly steps up to watch over Yukari, and the two grow ever closer. Then unexpected news comes from abroad, followed by the baby’s birth, and then tragedy. Debut author Keith probes the many shades of love, honor, and friendship in this musing, elegiac narrative. First-person narrator Mark is engagingly flawed; over the course of the story, he comes to realize just how despicable he was to have divorced his first wife due to their failure to conceive a child. The novel is a bit overloaded with international details, however, even encompassing a very minor character’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The best scenes are those that focus on the main trio’s dynamics, such as when Yukari makes love to Hans before whispering her love to Mark in the dark. Overall, it’s an elegant debut.
A skillful tale that explores relationship nuances and redemption.Pub Date: March 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-6219-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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