A multilayered love story, cloaked in a demanding writing style that masks the true nature of the plot.
A stylistically intense series of vignettes chronicle the life, love and matchless intellect of a woman who is an expert on medieval courtly literature.
Shapiro’s 84 vignettes center around Lady Murasaki, an intellectual who is overlooked and underestimated by her peers, and the love of her life, Prince Towa no Ai. The two journey through swiftly changing locales as numerous historical and literary characters move in and out of the narrative, from Pontius Pilate and Yeshua to the devilish Bolcitan and The Cat. The interactions between the characters provide setup after setup for Lady Murasaki to pontificate on her areas of expertise, answering questions and debating points with enthusiasm and great detail. Topics include Dante’s work (the character of Beatrice in particular), “Il Cortegiano,” Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian history, epic poetry, ballet and a divergence into modern social commentary in a look at “Wimp English.” Interspersed within these scenes are stream-of-consciousness lists, imagery and snippets of other scenes. The book is extremely talky, making it short on dramatic tension. Shapiro’s work is most engaging when he sticks to a narrative, as the final scenes between Lady Murasaki and Prince Towa no Ai are especially tender and moving. The rigorously demanding writing style will likely push most readers far beyond their comfort zone and compel them to keep a dictionary close at hand. Those who do soldier on until the end will be rewarded with the “Postilla Epistolaria,” Shapiro’s notes/correspondence on the vignettes. Here, the author informs that Lady Murasaki is based on his late wife Marianne and her experiences in academia, and explains that the characters so brutally revenged upon in the book are based on real individuals. This final section is as illuminating as viewing the top of a puzzle box which bears a completed picture, after having confusedly mulled over 1,000 random puzzle pieces. In this respect, Shapiro successfully motivates readers to reread specific passages with fresh eyes.
A multilayered love story, cloaked in a demanding writing style that masks the true nature of the plot.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4196-4753-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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