A classic work of early modernist literature given new life, thereby to fuel a new conversation about the book and its...
American edition of the “new,” non-Moncrieff translation of Proust’s posthumous novel, a story and a metastory alike that are full of tangles.
Copyright snags kept the British retranslation of The Prisoner from appearing in the U.S. for a full 16 years after being published in the U.K., but that’s only the beginning of a minor saga. Famously neurasthenic and agoraphobic, Proust died before this book appeared, and it hadn’t been part of the original plan for what became the six-volume In Search of Lost Time in any event. Had he been alive, writes translator Clark, “the book would have been considerably different from the one we have now.” She only begins to suggest those differences, but one wonders whether the already shrouded relationship Proust describes between his narrator, in many respects a stand-in for himself, and the rough-edged orphan Albertine might have been obscured even further, for while there is sex, there is no union and no clear reason why Albertine should have come to live with the narrator and his mother in the first place, Mama having perhaps been made nervous at the thought “that by expressing any reservations about the girl to whom I said I was going to become engaged, she might cast a shadow over my future life…perhaps lead me to reproach myself, once she was gone, for having hurt her by marrying Albertine.” It’s all very mysterious, for Albertine comes and goes, as do other characters who figure in the saga, such as M. de Charlus and the Duchesse de Guermantes; yet, each is there at exactly the right time. Proust, sharp-eyed and thinly veiled, writes here of the widespread acceptance of anti-Semitism and nationalism, there of sexual desire and its discontents (“It is the homosexuality that survives in spite of obstacles, condemned, covered in shame, that is the real homosexuality”), and always, always, of his Garbo-esque desire to be left alone.
A classic work of early modernist literature given new life, thereby to fuel a new conversation about the book and its author in a decidedly different world.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313359-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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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