A thematically and geographically varied first collection from the author of a simultaneously published, and essentially similar, first novel (see above). In 12 capably fashioned tales set in England, the Middle East, and America, at times ranging from the days of WW I to the present, Wilson writes about ambitious males variously fixated on marital fulfillment or sexual conquest, uncommitted or unorthodox Jews wrestling with imperatives of solidarity imposed by their homeland and traditions, and well-meaning professionals edging toward middle age who don't yet know who they want to be when they grow up. The influences of Evelyn Waugh, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth (with bits and pieces of T. Coraghessan Boyle and Donald Barthelme added) are detectable in several wry renderings of cultural or romantic paranoia and hostility (``Shoes,'' ``Paris Nights,'' ``Gathering Rosie''). But Wilson hits his stride with a superbly detailed and plotted revelation of the price exacted from a Holocaust survivor (``From Shanghai''), and with two suspenseful and surprising portrayals of endangered families: ``Not Far from Jericho,'' in which American Jews in Israel encounter an assortment of menacing Palestinians; and ``Omaha,'' the affecting story of a fragmented family in wartime London threatened, enlightened, and eventually healed by their experience of the Blitz. The more overtly comic tales are generally less involving, though Wilson makes effective farcical use of the theme of failed communication in the tale of a professor of astronomy who becomes a casualty of the political- correctness wars (``Physically Correct''), that of an idealistic American Jewish family living in Israel who unwisely look after their Russian neighbors (``Migrants''), and in the clever title story, in which a young man who thinks he's on the make falls for his psychotherapist's daughter and finds he still has much to learn about the arts of exploitation and seduction. Intriguing work from a talented newcomer whose tales of alienation and exile ring familiar and true. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-14-023827-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
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
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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