At the beginning of this novel which suggests very well the malignant boredom within a small British army unit engaged in an operation of an unspecified nature, one is never quite sure what is going to happen. By the close, one has been exposed to so many strenuous activities and ideas, that it's difficult to remember just what has gone on. Amis' conglomerate chronicle, a little science fiction (the genre he charted in New Maps of Hell), possibly a spy thriller (remember, he anatomized Fleming's oeuvre), some satire (he is a splendid satirist) uses many techniques, all the way from mischievous parody to more serious protest. The butt of the former is a psychiatrist at a nearby clinic; the burden of the latter is the (childish? futile?) protest against death, which becomes particularly paradoxical in a small world such as this bent on blowing up half a continent. Then, on the one hand, there's the Anti-Death League, a kind of treason here; and, on the other, the love of James Churchill, one of the young officers, for Catherine Casement, a love which should oppose death and somehow can't as James finds they are moving into the sphere of the "lethal node." And finally, there's a spy hunt for a "non-transvasive defector"— Amis has some marvelous jargon throughout.... All in all, it might be classed as an intellectual thriller— it's a work of considerable originality and agility and it should keep its readers firmly captive, midway between attention and admiration.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1966
ISBN: 014002803X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1966
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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