Vivid characters caught in a repressive regime fuel this powerful novel.
A military dictatorship fragments a family in this short novel by the late Uruguayan writer Benedetti (1920-2009; Blood Pact, 1997, etc.), originally published in 1982 and translated into English for the first time.
Santiago sits indefinitely in a Uruguayan prison because of his political activism while his wife, Graciela, and their 9-year-old daughter, Beatriz, have lived in exile for the past five years. He exchanges long letters with Graciela and thinks wistfully that “the only proof of god’s existence are Graciela’s legs.” Readers might wonder where he gets all the paper—the letters are that long—and nothing in them seems to catch the attention of the censors. Benedetti explores the pain of separation from loved ones, the mix of loneliness, hope and despair in a man who has no idea when he'll be released. Santiago's father, Don Rafael believes that memories of the family may be keeping his son alive. But the confinement will destroy what they have, because, as Graciela says, “The fact is, I don’t need Santiago anymore.” Prison changes both husband and wife, but her letters do not reveal that she has drifted out of love. Perhaps, she thinks, she is falling in love with Santiago’s best friend and fellow leftist, Rolando. She daydreams only of Rolando but she can’t bring herself to break the news to Santiago while he is still in prison, as it would destroy him. “I still love him as a wonderful friend,” she confides to the sympathetic Don Rafael, “a comrade whose behaviour has been beyond reproach.” The language is often beautifully expressive, as when Don Rafael reflects that one day his son “will have to see Graciela through the bars of another man’s love.” Beatriz adds her own childlike insights, perhaps reflecting a cognitive disability, noting for example that “freedom is a huge word” that “means many things” such as liberty, but her father is at Liberty Prison, which confuses her. One day Uruguay will be transformed, Don Rafael believes, “born in the backroom of the forbidden,” but “we’ll never again be what we were.” This powerful novel evokes the works of Gabriel García Márquez.
Vivid characters caught in a repressive regime fuel this powerful novel.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62097-490-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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