A brilliantly executed and altogether charming collection of linked stories, by the Croatian-born author of the autobiographical Apricots from Chernobyl (not reviewed). There's great variety in these 17 feisty narratives, several portraying the childhood and adolescent experiences of a recurring protagonist: the son of a clog-maker who, at different stages of his growth, discovers how fundamental to all living creatures is the yearning for freedom (``Yahbo the Hawk''); endures the complex rite of passage triggered by his father's death (``Apple''); undergoes a reluctant religious education (in the marvelous ``The Eye of God''), during which he progresses from the romantic wish to become ``An evangelist . . . A Billy Grahamovich'' to a warier accommodation with the Deity; and, in the climactic ``Raw Paper,'' recognizes that he's outgrown his European origins and pens a valediction to them as he prepares to leave his homeland for America. Other stories, which take place in various Yugoslavian and other Eastern European settings, introduce such vividly drawn characters as the village girl (in ``Wool'') who finally stands up to the abusive father whose mistreatment of her extends to her pet lamb; the stoical beekeeper (of ``Honey in the Carcase'') who patiently bears the violence brought by civil strife but snaps when his apiary is endangered; and (in the title story) the plain country woman, renowned for her cookery, who learns how to repay the gluttonous men who marry her to exploit her. Novakovich's essentially comic depictions of ordinary people bewildered and buffered by sophisticated exterior forces are somewhat reminiscent of the work of the Czech master Jaroslav Hasek. But his incandescent style is all his own: an exhilarating hybrid compounded of wry understatement, dazzling aphoristic wit, infusions of peasant superstition, and a deadpan, down-to-earth Central European variant of Latin American magical realism. Wonderful stories that won't be easily forgotten. It's our good fortune, and should be a source of some national pride, that Novakovich is now an American writer.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-55597-229-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© 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.
