Here Ozick has redone her finely balanced, intellectually rigorous, implication-thick story, "The Laughter of Akiva"—which appeared in The New Yorker but was withdrawn at the last moment from her last book, Levitation: Five Fictions. Ozick has broadened it, given it longer chronology; and she has made an odd and not completely satisfying choice of emphasis in terms of character. The novel, like the story, centers on Joseph Brill, the principal of a Hebrew day school (now placed in the Midwest), as he comes to terms with a dull student, Beulah Lilt—who happens to be the unlikely daughter of a brilliant, Suzanne-Langer-like philosopher, Hester Lilt. Hester's acuity of mind, her honesty, seriousness, and moral ballast—all these come to obsess Brill, who is Parisian-born, Holocaust-scarred: "He saw that they were unfailingly alike, members of the same broken band, behind whose dumbshow certain knowings pace and pitch." He cannot fathom, however, Hester's apparent motherly unconcern, her lack of anguish over daughter Beulah's opacity, silence, and paucity of visible spirit. Finally, then, Brill takes refuge in the conclusion that Hester Lilt has distorted her entire philosophical agenda in order to protectively justify mediocrity—Beulah's. But it turns out, in fact—time's irony—that Beulah will grow up to become a famous painter (her verbal limitations irrelevant, her dreaminess an asset), while Brill grows old watching—with no pleasure—the glittering academic achievements of a son born of his old age. (He has made a late, second-best marriage to a school-secretary, Iris: the succor of the plain.) Thus, in both its versions, Ozick's story has an inherent seriousness of ramification beyond the reach (or desire) of most contemporary fiction; and in its new elongation there are opportunities for gleaming satire, for beautiful passages about school-life, the pettinesses and bucolics—as Ozick repeatedly dazzles with beautiful sentences of dignity and concision. Yet, in focusing so much on Brill—his past (which often seems like an excuse for Ozick to scourge French cultural hypocrisy) and then his dotage (nullified by misapprehension, a heap of regret)—Ozick has somehow left out Hester Lilt, the archangel of the book: she comes in too subtly, flames too briefly, is gone too fast, without the mysterious, passionate presence on display in the shorter version. And the novel therefore seems unbalanced, emphasizing (too gloatingly) Brill's vanity, shortsightedness, and defeat. Ozick is so extraordinary a writer that more of her prose is always welcome; but though The Cannibal Galaxy is noteworthy, powerful fiction, "The Laughter of Akiva"—less vengeful and moralizing—remains the superior, richer story.
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1983
ISBN: 0815603541
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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