An ambitious, intermittently successful attempt to merge political musing, character study, and metaphor-studded ghost story.
Spark (Coconuts for the Saint, 1994) sets a vacationing Jewish woman’s journey toward self-discovery within the much larger context of social, political, and economic relations between Jews and blacks on the island of Barbados.
Charlotte Lewin’s grandfather sends her to Barbados with an antique menorah stored for years in his temple outside Boston. Charlotte’s supposed mission is to decide whether the menorah belongs to Bridgetown’s Jewish congregation or to the Bajan Institute, a museum devoted to native culture, which claims the menorah was crafted by a now-famous slave artisan. Her real mission, though, is to recover from the trauma of her sister’s death six months ago. After an awkward, talky introductory chapter, Spark juggles Charlotte’s narrative with that of Wayne Deare—an MIT graduate student who crossed paths with Charlotte in the Boston hospital where her sister died, then returned to Barbados to nurse his dying father. He now has a part-time job at the Bajan Institute, where his current assignment is to get possession of the menorah. Wayne’s conflicted thoughts and feelings are endearing, while Charlotte remains a stilted, self-conscious creation who seems like the author’s stand-in. Her first night in Barbados, Charlotte falls for a handsome young man the islanders believe is a “duppy” (a ghost not unlike the dybbuk of Jewish lore), but who is merely the ever-wandering son of the Lazars, leaders of the Jewish congregation. Meanwhile, Wayne and his brother have been hired by younger son Josh Lazar to parachute into a group as part of an anniversary celebration. When Josh’s parachute doesn’t open, Wayne’s brother is unfairly charged with murder. Tensions between Jews and blacks flare, and the menorah becomes a political football representing a fascinatingly ambiguous situation. Unfortunately, while she portrays the black community in all its complexity, Spark’s depiction of island Jews seldom rises above stereotype.
An ambitious, intermittently successful attempt to merge political musing, character study, and metaphor-studded ghost story.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55597-352-3
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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
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