bookshelf

THE MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR

Name: THE MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR
Author: Doris Lessing
ISBN: 0394757599

by Doris Lessing & edited by Anne Freedgood ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1975

bookshelf

After touching down on common ground In The Summer Before the Dark, Doris Lessing has written another didactic, apocalyptic briefing which she has described elsewhere as "an attempt at autobiography." But then all of her books have been autobiographical to a degree—all of them have been about women—while this one more markedly is about Woman, that uncomfortable presence. The self-trip takes place in a glum, anarchical present which is of course a projection of the near future although it keeps simultaneously returning to the past and the amenities that were. The city is bleak—all but a few people have left it, services have stopped, food is scarce. The woman here, an elderly one, is alone until Emily (and her familiar, an unsightly cat named Hugo) is visited upon her. Emily is an overserious, bright, undeceived girl of about twelve who keeps running off to join one of the scavenging communal packs of young people led by the attractive Gerald with whom she falls in love. In between her sorties, the woman and Hugo watch and wait; sometimes she opens endless doors to the endless rooms beyond her flat—all devastated; sometimes she attains more "personal," if enclosed, experiences in which she witnesses Emily as child or as infant—or is it herself? At the end Gerald loses control over his entourage and Emily. But it is Emily "transmuted" who steps across the final threshold and "there she was"—"the one person I had been looking for all this time." Read this as you will—as Mrs. Lessing's attempt to define herself and her tenacious sex; as a commentary on the strata of disintegrated society; on the stages of womankind, not only outmoded but outlived; on the levels of reality observed chiefly in regressive reverse. True, the Lessing name and perhaps more hold a certain initial inductive curiosity but somehow no matter how many doors are opened, unease, antipathy, "cold and silence" are there along with Her.

Pub Date: June 1, 1975

ISBN: 0394757599

Page Count: 213

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALFRED AND EMILY
by Doris Lessing

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CLEFT
by Doris Lessing

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STORY OF GENERAL DANN AND MARA’S DAUGHTER, GRIOT AND THE SNOW DOG
by Doris Lessing

bookshelf

IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

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

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

THE SECRET HISTORY

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

bookshelf

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.