A distressingly detached collection.
A Brazilian author’s debut explores ennui and obsession among young sophisticates.
In “Bianca and Me,” the 12th story of 21 in Parisot’s collection, the narrator describes Bianca: “Nothing seemed to interest her; she spoke in an indifferent, cold tone of voice, with a disdainful inflection as if she had a low opinion of everyone, even me, who she claimed to love.” This description proves apt for many of the characters in these briefly sketched stories: young, cosmopolitan figures are deeply, chronically bored by monogamy, heterosexuality, moderation, and bourgeois life in general. Their ennui frequently drives them further and further to seek thrills. In “A Trivial Story,” a wealthy teenager turns to drugs after eating disorders lose their allure. In “Tableau Vivant,” a young woman partakes in a live sex show in order to lose her virginity to another woman. But if these characters transgress what may be more traditional social boundaries, Parisot explores how women get revenge on men who go too far by any standard: a number of stories feature a female protagonist who murders—or tries to murder—a man who has mistreated her. While we might root for these women on principle, even readers with a high tolerance for unlikable personae may struggle with just about all of Parisot’s characters, who say things like, “The most horrible thing in the world is fat people” and “People with dignity shouldn’t live past thirty-five.” This isn’t the only difficulty the book presents. It's hard to write fiction about boredom in an engaging way, and the clipped, expository prose here flattens the reading experience even further. It may be that this is all a social critique, but Parisot plays it so straight that it’s hard to tell.
A distressingly detached collection.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62897-145-3
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
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
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