A disarming vision of one woman’s life in the underclass, though it takes time to come into focus.
A young woman’s journey from Africa to Berlin to locate her kidnapped son, as told by a chorus of voices.
The latest novel by Man Booker Prize–shortlisted New Zealand author Jones (Biografi, 1993, etc.) centers on Ines, who’s working as a hotel maid in Tunis when she falls for a German man. The two have a son, but the father quickly abducts the child and heads home to Berlin, prompting Ines to risk her life traveling from Tunisia to Sicily and through Europe to locate the boy and his father. The first portion of the novel is told by the people Ines met along the way, among them an Italian truck driver who demands sexual favors in return for ferrying her; an alpine hunter who helps her into Austria; an elderly blind man who hires her as a guide in Berlin; and, most prominently, an aquatic scientist with whom she cultivates the closest relationship. In time it becomes clear that the boy’s father is extorting Ines, making her pay for access to the child. But only later, when the narrative shifts to Ines’ own voice, does it becomes heartbreakingly clear how much Ines sacrificed beyond money for that access, and how willfully oblivious others have been to her emotions. Jones’ strategy of withholding Ines’ perspective for more than half the book is a little ungainly, and the characters' voices aren’t markedly distinct from each other—each speaks of Ines in a somber, sometimes pitying tone, and Ines’ voice is glum too. But the scenes between Ines and her son are affecting, showing connections that transcend their language barrier. Some color appears in the closing chapters, as she reveals the depth of her struggle, and the possibility of a hard-won happy ending appears.
A disarming vision of one woman’s life in the underclass, though it takes time to come into focus.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60819-699-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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