Rejected by more than a dozen publishers in 1977, this non-suspense novel by thriller-man Leonard now—thanks to his current hot-property status—makes its way into print. And, though delivered with leanly ironic narration and zip-lock dialogue, it's weak stuff indeed: a thin, unfocused replay of the familiar scenario (cf. Morris West, Irving Wallace, et al.) involving a contemporary religious miracle and its subsequent exploitation. Charlie Lawson—a.k.a. Brother Juvenal, a former Franciscan monk, age 33 (of course), now working for the Church's alcoholism rehab center in Detroit—has miraculous healing powers: when he touches the ill, he cures them—while blood spouts from his body at the five stigmata spots of Christ's wounds. Juvenal, a total innocent, is reticent (if unfazed and accepting) about all this. But a Catholic traditionalist movement (led by a racist, sexually repressed psycho-fanatic) tries to use Juvenal as a PR-weapon in the battle against Vatican-II reforms. Meanwhile, too, religion huckster Bill Hill plots to make big bucks off Juvenal, booking him (for $1 million) onto a Tom Snyder-ish TV talk-show. And Hill's reluctant sidekick, cynical PR-woman Lynn Faulkner, is transformed as she falls utterly in love with virginal Juvenal—who joyfully reciprocates, discoverings the joys of true romance and tender sex. ("I bleed from five wounds and heal people, but I've never been in love. Isn't that something?") Leonard's lively, gritty talent—individual scenes flare with lowdown atmosphere—can't disguise the overall sketchiness here: undeveloped drama, unconvincing characters. The tone wanders fuzzily from theological soap opera to black comedy to sitcom farce—especially in the limp finale: Juvenal's TV appearance, during which he heals the right-wing Catholic fanatic (injured while trying to murder Lynn). And the result is sporadically diverting but unsatisfying all around—too offhand (or simple-minded) for the religious-fiction audience, too feebly fanciful for Leonard's usual readership.
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1987
ISBN: 0060089598
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Arbor House
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
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
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