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BLESS ME, FATHER

Name: BLESS ME, FATHER
Author: Amber Coverdale Sumrall
ISBN: 0-452-27154-1

STORIES OF CATHOLIC CHILDHOOD

edited by Amber Coverdale Sumrall & Patrice Vecchione ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1994

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Poignant, funny, and reflective fictional recollections of Catholic childhoods, assembled by the editors of Catholic Girls (1992). Very few of these 54 stories and poems are disappointing—an accomplishment in so large a collection. Most authors are contributors to literary magazines; some, like Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, are better known. The stories cover many of the expected themes: the strict injunctions against sins of the flesh, the imponderable mysteries of the Church, the legacy of guilt, and the intellectual rebellion that often resulted. For example, in David Kowalczyk's ``Sinner'' an eight-year-old boy, confused by his teacher's embarrassed explanation of violations of the Sixth Commandment, confesses to a bemused priest that he has committed adultery 87 times. ``Sin'' by John Van Kirk delineates the feelings of an adolescent fearfully confessing the sin of masturbation. Able to repent but unable to reform, he sees below him ``the burning lava flow of Hell, and he could feel himself sliding toward it.'' On the other hand, Lucille Clifton's poem ``Far Memory'' recalls ``the sisters singing/at matins, their sweet music/the voice of the universe at peace.'' In Mary Ellis's wonderful story, ``Wings,'' a sensitive nine-year-old boy composes letters to his teenage brother in Vietnam; writing about his drunken father and overwhelmed mother, he implies his pain and his love while also experiencing magical dreams of joy and salvation. ``Impurity'' by Robert Clark Young takes a boy from a sadistic nun in the first grade to a sexy lay teacher whose ``dirty little secret'' is that she's a Methodist, to the sanctimonious priest who is ultimately exposed as a con man who romanced vulnerable widows and took their money. These authors are—often despite themselves—intoxicated by the elixir of their early, enveloping Catholicism. Recovering or practicing Catholics will experience a tingle of recognition; general readers should enjoy the consistent level of craftsmanship and emotional honesty.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-452-27154-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Plume

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
CATHOLIC GIRLS
edited by Amber Coverdale Sumrall & Patrice Vecchione

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.