Maugham once said "The artist's egoism is outrageous; it must be; he is by nature a solipsist and the world exists only for him to exercise upon it his powers of creation." This is concretely the intent and exemplification thereof in the title story of Fowles' collection of five longer short ones — two of which will pick up this theme where the artist must cold-shoulder the world and human values to swaddle his creativity. Thus he introduces also outrageous, also impossibly egoistic Breasley, who has found a sanctuary for his solipsism in a lovely house in Brittany where he is attended and serviced by two young women when David Williams, a writer-lecturer in the field having given up his own work, comes to interview him. There David realizes for the first time that his own "Ebony Tower" is a void where "safety hid nothingness" except the abandonment of himself and his potential. In "Poor Koko" we have another reclusive — a writer of 66 who has always shirked real life for his work — now to be destroyed by the impromptu visit of a young hood. And again in "The Enigma" the disappearance of a conservative MP, hemmed in by correct appearances and rightist assumptions, vanishes if only to impose a lingering question mark on the mediocrity of his achievements. The last story is a sad fairy tale come true, told to a child, experienced by a young woman — and there's a charming lais of the 12th century Marie de France in "Eliduc." To the stories Fowles lends his eclectic erudition, the attractive overlay of sensuous surfaces, and a little commentary for and of our time. And as always he proceeds with splendid ease and confidence to catch the eye at a pleasurably decorative level and then turn it inward.
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1974
ISBN: 0316287458
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1974
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Told through the points of view of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia-this perceptive first novel by poet Alvarez tells of a wealthy family exiled from the Dominican Republic after a failed coup, and how the daughters come of age, weathering the cultural and class transitions from privileged Dominicans to New York Hispanic immigrants. Brought up under strict social mores, the move to the States provides the girls a welcome escape from the pampered, overbearingly protective society in which they were raised, although subjecting them to other types of discrimination. Each rises to the challenge in her own way, as do their parents, Mami (Laura) and Papi (Carlos). The novel unfolds back through time, a complete picture accruing gradually as a series of stories recounts various incidents, beginning with ``Antojos'' (roughly translated ``cravings''), about Yolanda's return to the island after an absence of five years. Against the advice of her relatives, who fear for the safety of a young woman traveling the countryside alone, Yolanda heads out in a borrowed car in pursuit of some guavas and returns with a renewed understanding of stringent class differences. ``The Kiss,'' one of Sofia's stories, tells how she, married against her father's wishes, tries to keep family ties open by visiting yearly on her father's birthday with her young son. And in ``Trespass,'' Carla finds herself the victim of ignorance and prejudice a year after the Garcias have arrived in America, culminating with a pervert trying to lure her into his car. In perhaps one of the most deft and magical stories, ``Still Lives,'' young Sandi has an extraordinary first art lesson and becomes the inspiration for a statue of the Virgin: ``Dona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us like Jesus into the heathen.'' The tradition and safety of the Old World are just part of the tradeoff that comes with the freedom and choice in the New. Alvarez manages to bring to attention many of the issues-serious and light-that immigrant families face, portraying them with sensitivity and, at times, an enjoyable, mischievous sense.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-945575-57-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
PROFILES
APPRECIATIONS
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