An intelligent and vivid consideration of the embodiedness of memory, if not a particularly engrossing story.
An aging trustee of a patrician boys’ school looks back on his years there.
This slim new novel from Ozick, a nonagenarian giant of Jewish American writing, is presented as the school-days memoirs of Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, a trustee of Temple Academy for Boys. His entry is purportedly only one part of a project he has undertaken along with the school’s other trustees (all of whom, including him, are WASPs). As he reflects on what the school meant to him, the journal entry–style vignettes are interrupted more and more frequently due to his ailments and other aspects of aging—which is perhaps Ozick’s real theme here. Throughout the novella, memory is embodied in objects: From the special family heirlooms that his father acquired on expeditions in Egypt (a scarab ring; a curious bejeweled storklike sculpture) to more seemingly banal objects (the Remington typewriter with which Petrie records the story; the pages themselves), Ozick shows how objects can powerfully represent the past and how our perspective on that past can be colored by the passing of time. But the object that holds most interest in Petrie’s remembrances is another boy at school—the formidably named Ben-Zion Elefantin, whose murky past and heritage interest and frighten Petrie. Their unlikely friendship, and its homoerotic undertones, consumes much of Petrie’s musings. Central to these musings is Elefantin’s unfamiliar Jewish heritage and ties to Egypt, which faced much scrutiny at (the pointedly named) Temple Academy. Petrie vacillates between awareness of (if not regret about) the prejudice Jewish students faced and unthinking perpetuation of garden-variety WASP antisemitism ("In my own Academy years I saw for myself how inbred is that notorious Israelite clannishness"). The antiquities of the book’s title, then, are not only the objects—which Petrie excitedly shows to Elefantin—but the views, emotions, and experiences Petrie and his schoolmates once held, and perhaps still hold, changed as they have been over the years. What we have here is more a character study than a developed story, but Ozick’s talent shines through nonetheless; the prose itself is virtuosic.
An intelligent and vivid consideration of the embodiedness of memory, if not a particularly engrossing story.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31882-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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