First published in 1956, this stirring, populous, large-hearted story about a rogue environmentalist is both a portrait of a...
Gary (1914-1980; The Kites, 2017, etc.), French Resistance aviator, war hero, and the only author to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt under two different names, overlays the plight of elephants and humans in this sprawling and ambitious novel set in post–WWII Africa.
The book begins as a story within a story, in a style reminiscent of Conrad, the details emerging gradually. A Jesuit priest arrives deep in the bush of French Equatorial Africa to question the colonial administrator there about events of the recent past. At the heart of the story is an idealist and former dentist named Morel, who petitions for the protection of the elephant herds. Dismissed as a crackpot and accused of misanthropy for caring more about elephants than people, he eventually abandons his petition and turns vigilante, shooting hunters and elephant trappers, burning ivory traders' buildings, ordering a trophy hunter flogged in public. His story catches the world's attention, stirring up sympathy for his cause and creating a public relations disaster for the local colonial government. Others join him: an elderly Danish naturalist and environmentalist; a young German woman orphaned in the siege of Berlin and raped by Russian soldiers; a dishonorably discharged, alcoholic American major; a charismatic Oulé tribesman with a French wife and education who wants to use Morel and his elephants in the struggle for African self-determination; a Jewish American news photographer who lost his family to the Nazis. As in The Kites, Gary is interested in the fate of idealism in a disillusioned, violent world, but this novel also compels us to consider the fate of nature in the face of human encroachment and greed. The horrors of WWII and the atomic bomb loom over the characters. Morel's identification with elephants began in a German concentration camp, where the idea of them roaming free on the plains of Africa kept him sane. Though his motives get twisted for political ends, he repeatedly rejects nationalism, insisting that the elephants are not symbols but living beings: "They breathe, they suffer, and they die, like you and me." The theme of suffering runs deeply through the novel. So does the loneliness of the human condition, which dogs each of these characters differently, including the British colonel with the pet jumping bean that is later buried with him. Gary shows a deep sympathy for his well-drawn, misfit characters as well as for the continent of Africa, shown here at a crossroads.
First published in 1956, this stirring, populous, large-hearted story about a rogue environmentalist is both a portrait of a vanished age and a timely reminder of the choices that still confront us.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-56792-626-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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