Singer's first novel in five years touches on many of his recurring themes (lust vs. reason, paganism vs. civilization, women as she-devils) but in a strange, largely unconvincing context: pre-medieval, primitive Poland, where assorted pagan tribes fight for control of rural neighborhoods, at odds over (among other things) whether to live by hunting or farming. ("Poland" comes from pola, meaning "fields.") The narrative—episodic, disjointed, melodramatic—more or less centers on Cybula, chieftain of a forest-dwelling, hunting clan called the Lesniks. He flees into the mountains, with other hunters, when the Lesniks are attacked by a raping, pillaging band of warrior-farmers intent on tilling the Lesnik's land (and subjecting them to field-hand slavery). Eventually, however, the two tribes achieve semi-peaceful coexistence—thanks in part to the marriage between the warrior-king and Laska, Cybula's comely daughter. Moreover, widower Cybula—who has a turbulent sex life with both aggressive Kora and Kora's scrawny daughter Yagoda—finds an unlikely soulmate in quiet, wise, homosexual warrior Nosek. Together the men make the long journey to the relatively modern town of Miastro; they buy goods there, purchase a Tatar concubine for the warrior-king, and also bring back with them Jewish cobbler Ben Dosa—who offers to teach the tribes reading and writing. But, when the travelers return, they find a society bloodily divided again: the warrior-king goes mad; his men run amok, killing and raping; Kora ("a bloodthirsty animal") leads the Lesnik women in a retaliatory bloodbath—and in human-sacrifice rites. (Ben Dosa, observing in horror, cries "Sodom and Gomorrah!") The barbaric situation is worsened further by the arrival of a charismatic, anti-Semitic missionary for Christianity. And the conclusion is ambiguous at best: Cybula rescues the Tatar girl (who loves Ben Dosa and wants to convert to Judaism) front human-sacrifice and is forced to flee with Yagoda—who kills mother Kora, now revealed to be a harlot as well as a monster. There are traces here of Singer's narrative magic: his slyly matter-of-fact delivery of horrifying information; his ironic treatment of philosophical quandaries. But none of the themes in this historical novel—man's essential primitivism, the joys of vegetarianism, etc.—emerge clearly or persuasively; the crude contrast between Ben Dosa's nobility and the foulness of the pagans (and Christians) will be off-putting even to most Jewish readers. And, simply as storytelling, this may be the weakest work of Singer's career: uninvolving, clumsily prosaic, more reminiscent of a bad-imitation Clan of the Cave Bear than anything in the Nobel Prize-winner's beguiling canon.
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1988
ISBN: 0374529086
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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