Despite needlessly confusing chronology, a memorable debut, likely to make waves.
The Finn in question is not Huck, but his father, a “strange sad monster” in newcomer Clinch’s bold and deeply disturbing work.
Bad as he was in Twain’s masterpiece, here Pap Finn has ballooned into something far worse: “Incarnate personal evil.” Clinch eschews a linear narrative, looping back and forth between time periods; he aims to cast a wide net, pillorying not just one individual but the pathology of racism. That began with Pap’s own father, Judge Finn, who paid double for a white servant to avoid proximity to blacks. Pap inherits the racism while hungering for black women, the choicest of forbidden fruit. The woman who lasts the longest is Mary, stolen by Finn off a sternwheeler. He locks her up in a cabin on the Judge’s grounds until they’re discovered and banished; Finn strangles the tattletale responsible (his first murder). Finn and Mary move to a ramshackle house by the Mississippi; a savvy riverman, Finn runs his trotlines, sells his fish and spends the proceeds on whiskey. In time, Mary gives birth to Huck, who can pass for white, a huge relief to Finn. A few incidents duplicate those in Twain, but the novels could not be more different; instead of Huck’s unlettered child’s voice, we have an omniscient narrative, grave, erudite and rich in the secretions of adult knowledge; terse dialogue acts as an effective counterpoint. All along, Clinch’s intent is to probe the nature of evil. Mary and Huck briefly escape Finn’s drunken reign of terror and are taken in by the Widow Douglas; Finn reclaims them and strangles Mary in her sleep, then skins her like a rabbit. Much later, Finn scribbles incriminating drawings on his walls; whether or not they show a conscience at work, they will lead directly to Finn’s own murder by another black woman, his next intended victim.
Despite needlessly confusing chronology, a memorable debut, likely to make waves.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-6591-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
