Brilliant, like all of Krasznahorkai’s books—and just as challenging, though well worth the effort required.
Krasznahorkai’s latest postmodern experiment explores small-town discontents in post-unification eastern Germany.
“Your voice is so fucking insipid, Florian, are you some Jew or what?” So bellows “the Boss,” the head of a clutch of neo-Nazis in a Thuringian backwater smack in the heart of the new Germany. Apart from idolizing Hitler, the Boss is also a hectoring concertmaster who owns a cleaning company (its ominous all-caps slogan “ALLES WIRD REIN, ALL WILL BE CLEAN”). It’s good for business but enraging all the same that someone is spray-painting sites associated with Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the Boss’ many obsessions, with graffiti signed “WOLF HEAD.” The subject of the Boss’ meltdown is Florian Herscht, a gentle and dim giant who is fascinated by particle physics, even if he doesn’t understand it, and harbors fears of dentists, tattoos, and the end of the world. About the latter he regularly writes to German premier Angela Merkel, warning of the impending apocalypse. Reminiscent of the similarly dim but good-hearted giant of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, Florian strains to understand what is happening in tiny Kana, now populated by immigrants from Eastern Europe and from even as far away as Vietnam. While the Boss rails against his neighbor Ringer, “a Jew, meaning he was part of the conspiracy,” the wolves are indeed returning, as are magical birds and other signs and portents of the very apocalypse that Florian worries about. In a long book with only one terminal punctuation mark, not easy to read but graced by a certain poetry, Krasznahorkai allegorizes globalism and nationalism, gets in digs at complacent burgers and ardent environmentalists, and illustrates, through Florian and other characters, how thinly the veneer of civilization lies atop a thick crust of savagery.
Brilliant, like all of Krasznahorkai’s books—and just as challenging, though well worth the effort required.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780811231534
Page Count: 512
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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