Respectful, playful, and often entertaining—though just as often puzzling. Barker’s fans will enjoy the outing, forgiving...
A headily curry-scented tale, part fable and part imaginative biography, by postmodern maven Barker (In The Approaches, 2014, etc.).
Devotees of Indian religious thought will know at least the name of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th-century guru who was deeply influential in the spread of Vedanta and other expressions of modern theistic Hinduism. He is perhaps less well known as the illiterate keeper of a temple to Kali who was as devoted to its benefactor, the widow Rani, as to the goddess. Barker calls her lively reconstruction of this episode “a painstakingly constructed, slightly mischievous, and occasionally provocative/chaotic mosaic.” That’s about right, though the chaotic parts deserve underscoring, especially when they involve such odd turns as an anachronistic point of view delivered by a camera fitted to a certain bird, which in turn yields a couple of Python-esque moments; catch one and see, Barker counsels: “This shouldn’t be too difficult because the pre–1855 Indian swift is quite silly and highly accident-prone….” Why the ploy? Kali only knows. Her name lies hidden in the very title of the book, though the actual cabbage kin has a role, too, as does the Bengali city of Kolkata, which means “field of Kali,” where such a vegetable might be grown. Suspend disbelief while you’re catching the bird, and suspend the ordinary expectations of plot development; still, this is no postmodern, attention-deficit-begging exercise in the manner of a Danielewski or Kristeva but instead a more straightforward if still idiosyncratic story that evokes Eleanor Catton and even William Vollmann at points. In the end, that story centers on how faith works and religious communities and traditions are formed, sometimes, it seems, accidentally as much as by design: “The Brahmini has a very controlling manner and is of strong opinions, and after only a very short acquaintance with Uncle she became convinced that Uncle was an incarnation of God.”
Respectful, playful, and often entertaining—though just as often puzzling. Barker’s fans will enjoy the outing, forgiving her quirks.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-719-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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