Too long, too intricate, and finally too obvious: a nice plot that ends up tripping over itself.
First-novelist Herrick (stories: At the Sign of the Naked Waiter, 1992) offers a science tale about a genetically engineered baby.
Brooklyn housewife Pinky is happy with her bioengineer husband Arthur and son Teddy, seven, but she wants another child—yet can’t convince Arthur to have one. Arthur, who does DNA research, is feeling rather besieged by the maternal instinct just now: his lab assistant, Marina, has talked him into giving a sample of his semen so she can have a child of her own, and Arthur is afraid Pinky will find out. What he doesn’t know is that Marina has “boosted” his semen with DNA chromosomes in a genetic experiment of her own. Ken Fishhammer, head of the bioengineering department, knows what Marina has done and is interested in seeing the outcome—especially when the university expels him and shuts down his lab after discovering that he was performing unauthorized research. Ken goes to work for a private laboratory and waits for Marina’s child as the only means left to test his work now that his project has been cancelled. Marina gives birth to a healthy boy but dies a few months later in a road accident, and her sister Katya is left with the child. Ken immediately steps in and offers to adopt the boy, but his offers on the child’s behalf (a specially constructed nursery in the lab, along with a deaf-mute nanny named Maurice) are rejected when Katya informs him that “other relatives” have taken the baby. Indeed, Pinky wakes up that same day to discover a healthy, happy, well-fed baby boy on her doorstep. Happy ending? More like a bad start. Ken isn’t willing to let his superchild escape and sets about tracking him down. Meanwhile, can Arthur (who’s now trying to adopt the boy) keep his family together? It might help if he knew the child were really his.
Too long, too intricate, and finally too obvious: a nice plot that ends up tripping over itself.Pub Date: March 31, 2003
ISBN: 0-670-03197-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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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