A novel about character and identity needs sharper, stronger protagonists than the blurry Ibrahim and Mariam.
Love proves elusive in this soulful tale of missed connections from Palestinian feminist Khalifeh (The Inheritance, 2005, etc.).
Ibrahim is a public school teacher. The 20-year-old Muslim fled his Jerusalem home to avoid an arranged marriage and now lives in an outlying village, where he writes poetry. He first sees Mariam, a Christian, in a churchyard, dressed in black. Almost at once he is in love with her, or perhaps with the idea of love. Ibrahim has led a sheltered life (he never tasted wine until he was invited to a dinner party). Mariam has been sheltered too, by her many brothers in Brazil, where she was raised; now she lives alone with her mother. The two innocents enjoy their first hug in an Armenian convent. Carnal knowledge comes later, in a Jerusalem hostel, but Mariam’s pregnancy is nonetheless a big surprise. Ibrahim, a weakling, hides from her and later from her brothers, just arrived from Brazil seeking vengeance. He discovers a new interest, revolutionary politics, on the eve of the Six Day War. At this point, Khalifeh’s account becomes wildly rushed and jumbled. She skips over more than three decades, during which Ibrahim roams the world and has three failed, childless marriages, but prospers as a businessman. The ailing 60-year-old returns to the occupied territories in 2000, searching for Mariam in hopes of easing his solitude and spiritual emptiness. He finds their son before he finds her. Michael is a psychic with a large following; he flatly rejects his father, this “defeated stranger.” Mariam, now a cloistered nun, is an enigmatic presence who offers Ibrahim no solace. Once again the political overtakes the personal, as stones and bullets fly in Jerusalem: The Second Intifada has begun.
A novel about character and identity needs sharper, stronger protagonists than the blurry Ibrahim and Mariam.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-56656-699-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Interlink
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
