About to celebrate her 90th birthday, Godden, author of over 60 books for adults and children, again writes with grace and a cheerfully lilting prose, evoking the mannered high-style of a cultivated English/Indian backwater. Based on an actual case involving the theft of a statue of the god Shiva (in which the god, Acting Through the Government of India, became the plaintiff), this is a tale of quiet sleuthing, romance, and grand tragedy, set in a present-day Indian coastal hotel of minimal comforts but top-notch cuisine, courtesies, and clientele. Junior barrister Michael Dean, of a prestigious London firm, was raised in India and is now chosen to track down the thief who has made off with a priceless, revered statue of the god Shiva (in his manifestation as Lord of the Dance). The statue, an object of veneration, had long been resident in Patna Hall, a grandly veranda-ed hotel for the cultivated traveler (or those determined to be so). The hotel, managed by the elderly Englishwoman Miss Sanni, is where a visiting professor discovers that an elegant copy has been substituted for the god's statue. Joined by Dutta, an Indian Chief Inspector, Michael not only turns up both clues and questions in the hotel and in the marketplace, but also finds heated romance with cool, fascinating Artemis Knox, who arrives with a ``cultural'' group. Could the thieves have been old servants who worried that the hotel was in financial trouble? Could— certainly not!—Miss Sanni herself have sought such a solution? The truth, when revealed, will bring love and death in its wake. A delight for Godden's many followers, one encompassing the experience of the beauties and traditions of India, the richness of its religions, and Godden's own essential dash of gallantry and grand gestures.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-688-15550-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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