by Pascal Mercier translated by Shaun Whiteside ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2012
A slow-moving portrait of grief and dislocation by the author of the fast-moving Night Train to Lisbon (2007).
The Perlmann of the present novel—Swiss author Mercier’s first book, published in German in 1995—is a German linguist, the master of several languages, who has recently lost his wife and, with her, his interest in much of anything that has to do with his former life. Once he had been passionately committed to the world of language and the mind, even disengaging from his parents over their insistence on speaking their native Plattdeutsch (“they were increasingly led simply by the phrases and metaphors of the dialect, and by the prejudices that were crystallized in it”). Now Perlmann hangs around his apartment, avoiding the work he is supposed to be doing. All that changes when, at one of the conferences Perlmann still constantly attends, an Italian linguist, now employed by industry, recruits him to become part of a think tank of scholars devoted to questions of how language affects mind and vice versa. Perlmann finds himself out of his element in the political jockeying of the para-academic group, where battles of one-upmanship are played out with cigarette packs (this is Europe, after all, and everyone smokes); moreover, he’s frozen when he finds himself called on to deliver a keynote address, finally turning in desperation to the work of an unsung scholar that he thinks he can pass off as his own. Plagiarism thus hatched, Perlmann breathes a little easier—until, that is, he learns that the source of his stealing has scraped up the rubles necessary to travel to the conference. Writes Mercier, “There was only one thing he hadn’t thought about: that Leskov was a flesh-and-blood human being with his own will and pride.” The setup is worthy of a David Lodge or Malcolm Bradbury, but Mercier lacks the humor of either of those English satirists; instead, the novel settles into a kind of slow funk, the literary equivalent of moping, as Perlmann wrestles with what to do next, surprised by his own torpor and reluctance. But for readers of a philosophical bent, appreciative of slowly unfolding, elegant tales, this will be a pleasure.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1957-5
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019
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
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by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
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
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