A thoughtful and provocative depiction of how the past makes claims on the present.
A Chinese immigrant in Toronto confronts her haunting family history.
Thirty-something Kang moved to Canada from her native China six months ago. Her older sister, Jian, was raped years before, when Kang was 12, and the event permanently altered both their lives. Jian’s life was all but ruined, and Kang would view men with wary suspicion; back in China, she was labeled a “spinster,” and in Canada, she remains so closed to the idea of dating that she questions her identity: “Am I a woman? Kang sometimes asked herself. She certainly did not want to be a woman like her sister…abandoned by her fiancé, and married to a man without love.” She works hard and lives frugally in order to save enough to go back to school and become certified to teach, as she did in China. She finds a promising deal—a room with free rent in exchange for providing assistance to 60-something Tania, who grew up in the suburbs of Moscow during the Soviet era. Kang proofreads her memoir and is struck by the USSR’s similarities to China during the Cultural Revolution. She realizes that Tania’s biography overlaps with her own father’s, as he was a medical student in Moscow; this is particularly intriguing, as her dad’s past has always been shrouded in mystery. Meanwhile, she begins to fall for Tania’s nephew, Brian, and the two decide to travel to Russia, united in a desire to explore their roots. In this novel, Roy (Calls across the Pacific, 2015, etc.) powerfully describes the dark legacy of Kang’s sister’s sexual assault, which affected the entire family. Her transparent prose belies the story’s psychological complexity as Kang’s assiduous march into the future is shadowed by history. Both her father and sister suffered from the effects of different kinds of evil—Jian from a rapist, and her father from an oppressive state. Over the course of the story, the author manages to construct an exquisite exploration of the insidious power of personal history, combined with an unconventional account of the immigrant experience.
A thoughtful and provocative depiction of how the past makes claims on the present.Pub Date: July 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77133-605-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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