THE YEAR IS ’42

Name: THE YEAR IS ’42
Author: Nella Bielski
ISBN: 0-375-42286-2

by Nella Bielski & translated by John Berger & Lisa Appignanesi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2004

Bielski’s tone lends grace to her project, but, sans supporting detail, it seems an affectation that leaves the whole...

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The currents of WWII alter the lives of a German officer and a Russian doctor, in a poignant but thin tale by Ukrainian author Bielski.

At the start of what often reads like the summary of a longer and, ideally, fuller work, German Wehrmacht officer Karl Bazinger arrives in Nazi-occupied Paris. Though some Parisians eye Bazinger warily, the situation in the city remains, initially at least, only subtly different from what it had been before the occupation, leaving Bazinger free to savor the city’s riches. Bazinger sports “carroty public hair” and “delicate skin,” as Bielski (Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy, 1990, not reviewed) writes in one the few descriptive passages she provides. She concentrates primarily on a narrative structure that affects a suitably melancholy tone and moves freely and in a dreamlike way among its characters and incidents. Warned by superiors that he speaks too freely—that is, critically—about the war, Bazinger becomes curious about the activities of Hans Bielenberg, a visitor from Germany. Eventually, Bazinger’s suspicions are confirmed: Bielenberg has been part of a resistance group working against the Nazis. In the second half, the story moves to Kiev, introduces Katia Zvesdny, a doctor, then drifts into an extended segment about Katia’s father, a violinist, his wife, who deserts him, and his subsequent relationship with a singer. Meanwhile, Katia’s husband, declared an enemy of Russia for alleged sabotage, is sentenced to ten years in a camp in the north. Katia soldiers on, attempting to save Jews from the massacre at Baby Yar. One day Bazinger arrives to seek Katia’s medical help—scabs and pustules afflict his body. Almost miraculously, he forms “fragile new skin” as his sores flake off and he and Katia form a bond.

Bielski’s tone lends grace to her project, but, sans supporting detail, it seems an affectation that leaves the whole feeling rather pointless.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-375-42286-2

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ISABELLE
by John Berger & Nella Bielski

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.