by Peter Handke ; translated by Krishna Winston ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2022
A carping, tedious journey into the hinterlands.
A wandering, seemingly plotless novel by Austrian writer Handke.
It begins with a bee sting: A pensioner in the exurbs of Paris walks barefoot in the grass and earns a hymenopteran bite for his troubles. Spurred, he takes the occasion to pack his bags and go for an adventure that it pleases him to think is somehow illegal. “Yes, at last I would lay eyes on my fruit thief, not today, not tomorrow, but soon, very soon, as a person, the whole person, not just the phantom fragments my aging eyes had glimpsed in all the years before, usually in the middle of a crowd, and always at a distance, and those glimpses had never failed to get me moving again,” writes Handke in a typically winding sentence. That fruit thief is a young woman who soon becomes the center of the story even though the oldster remains the omniscient narrator. He dislikes the new Europe: “I usually found women in veils properly—or improperly—offputting,” he grumbles, having encountered Muslim women on a train. He finds his fellow humans thick as bricks: “Nothing makes them prick up their ears.” The young woman, Alexia, is no more tolerant, a Nietzschean rebel who emerges as a younger, female doppelgänger to the older man’s world-weary curmudgeon. She wanders across France, her vast handbag full of, yes, pilfered fruit that she considers it her right to possess, staking out places where she can readily nab the stuff: “She evaluated each place according to the spots, nooks, and crannies where a piece of fruit grew that she could grab.” Why not televisions or late-model Renaults? Alexia falls in with an occasional companion who, Handke takes pains to point out, is of darker complexion than she, “fighting his way at her side through this European jungle.” Their travels don’t amount to much, but they afford Handke plenty of opportunities to sneer at modern mores and modern life and the boring homogeneity of humankind, especially the non-European sort.
A carping, tedious journey into the hinterlands.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3749-0650-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
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by Peter Handke ; translated by Krishna Winston
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by Peter Handke ; translated by Krishna Winston ; Ralph Manheim
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by Peter Handke ; translated by Krishna Winston
by Trevor Noah ; illustrated by Sabina Hahn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2024
A sweet bedtime story.
A boy and his stuffed bear head into the woods.
Having captured readers’ attention with Born a Crime (2016), his bestselling memoir of growing up in South Africa, comedian and television host Noah has written a parable about decision-making. As he puts it in a brief prologue, “It’s about disagreements and difference—but it’s also about how we bridge those gaps and find what matters most, whether we’re parents or kids, neighbors, gnomes, or political adversaries. It’s a picture book, but it’s not a children’s book. Rather, it is a book for kids to share with parents and for parents to share with kids.” With plentiful illustrations by Hahn and in language aimed at young listeners, it tells the story of a small boy so impatient to start his Saturday adventures that he rebels against the rules of his household and heads out without brushing his teeth or making his bed, despite the reminders of his stuffed bear, Walter. “We can’t just run away,” protests the bear. “Your mother will miss you. And where will we sleep? And who will make us waffles?” “We’ll build our own house,” the boy responds. “And we’ll grow our own waffles!” From there, the pair go on their walkabout, encountering a garden gnome, a pair of snails, and a gang of animated coins who have lessons to offer about making choices. Though the author suggests in the introduction that adult readers might enjoy the book on their own, those looking for a follow-up to the memoir or a foray into adult fiction should be warned that this is not that book.
A sweet bedtime story.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593729960
Page Count: 128
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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