A hit and two misses by novelist, poet, and journalist Harrison (Dalva, 1988; Legends of the Fall, 1979). These three novellas contrast the chaos of so-called civilization, signified by the havoc wreaked by the wantonness of the human libido, against the brutal yet orderly simplicity of nature. In the title piece, Julip tries to get her brother Bobby declared mentally incompetent and freed from prison, where he has been sent after shooting her three lovers. Although Julip willingly had sex with each of the victims, Bobby, who harbors sexual feelings for his sister, claims that he was only avenging his sister's defilement. Julip, a dog trainer, has long used her physical attractiveness to get what she wants, yet she is only truly at peace when she is among the animals she loves at her farm in rural Wisconsin. Overall, ``Julip'' is a nonstop joy ride of a read as the vibrant protagonist travels from Wisconsin to Florida using all of her considerable charm to spring her loved one from jail. More ponderous is ``The Seven-Ounce Man,'' about an errant Indian named Brown Dog, a character first introduced in Harrison's The Woman Lit By fireflies. Brown Dog is torn between his political principles and his libidinal and alcoholic impulses. Harrison is less effective when he forgoes plot and dialogue and lets his characters introspectively pontificate on the vagaries of human nature, as Brown Dog does here. The third novella, ``The Beige Dolorosa,'' is about a professor who traumatically loses his job over accusations of sexual harassment. Moving unwillingly to Arizona, the protagonist eventually finds the kind of spiritual fulfillment that has eluded him all of his life, yet not before one last, potentially disastrous flush of sexual desire. More philosophical than plot-driven, this last novella is the most blandly written; the more intellectual potential Harrison's characters possess, the less interesting they are. Hedonists, beware, Harrison seems to be saying; unchecked sexual desire leads to incest, infidelity, and prostitution. Mother Nature, on the other hand, offers a spiritual connection to an animal instinct untainted by modern neuroses. Like most people, Harrison's characters are caught right in the middle.
Pub Date: April 29, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-48885-0
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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