Buck scholars only need apply.
A newly unearthed novel by the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Good Earth, following the rocketlike rise of a literary prodigy.
In the final years of her life, Buck (1892-1973) worked on this novel, which was discovered in late 2012 in a storage unit in Fort Worth, Texas. Buck earned her fame by illuminating China for Americans who understood little about the country, but she squandered her reputation with overproductivity, writing more than 40 novels and nearly 30 nonfiction books. This book will do little to elevate her literary esteem. It tracks its hero, Randolph “Rann” Colfax, literally from the womb and into his early 20s, and the story is framed with wooden set pieces and melodramatic dialogue. The son of a college professor, Rann quickly emerges as a boy genius, and various people soon materialize to support or take advantage of this bright boy. A male teacher attempts to seduce him (prompting an odd lecture from Rann’s mother, who’s less concerned with pedophilia than homosexuality). A wealthy English woman helps him find his sexual self, and the daughter of a Chinese art dealer introduces him to the charms of Paris. In the military, Rann monitors the Korean DMZ, and he witnesses enough corruption during his stint to produce a novel that quickly becomes a sensation. The hackneyed plot diminishes moments that reveal Buck’s genuine sensitivity to the Asian diaspora; one of the best-drawn characters is the Chinese manservant of Rann’s grandfather in Brooklyn. Written late in her life, this book is worth attention as a summing up of Buck's experiences and interests: the links between art and scientific rigor, the fate of Asia in the American century and the perils of literary celebrity. As entertainment, though, it’s dated and thin.
Buck scholars only need apply.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3970-2
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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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