THE LEGEND OF PRADEEP MATHEW

Name: THE LEGEND OF PRADEEP MATHEW
Author: Shehan Karunatilaka
ISBN: 978-1-55597-611-8

by Shehan Karunatilaka ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2012

The novel works on many levels—including the sociological and the mythic—and can serve as a primer both for adepts and for...

bookshelf

An investigation into the life and times of a mysterious Sri Lankan cricket player from the perspective of an obsessed fan.

Though Sri Lankan himself, sportswriter Wijedasa Gamini Karunasena (Wije to his friends) fits in well with the American stereotype of the journalist as a cigarette-smoking boozer. He and his friends spend their time compiling and arguing about all-star cricket teams, in much the same way Americans would argue over the relative merits of DiMaggio, Williams and Mantle. After years of abusing his liver, and after the Cricket World Cup matches in 1996, he begins to track down the enigmatic Pradeep Mathew, a “spinner” and the best Sri Lankan cricketer ever. (One sign of Pradeep’s omnipresence in the culture occurs when one of the journalist’s friends refers to Montgomery Clift as "the Pradeep Mathew of the silver screen.") In a short period of time Pradeep made a splash and then disappeared, and his mystery involves being simultaneously forgotten and mythologized. Wije is determined to track down the cricketer’s movements and ultimate destiny, so he puts ads in the paper, fishing for "anyone who knows anything about...," and he has limited success—a woman who claims to be his sister, a former girlfriend who has a handwritten poem from the athlete—but Pradeep and his legacy largely remain silent. Wije plays out his obsession with his friend Ari but against a family he’s neglecting, and his problems with whisky eventually land him into a 12-step recovery program.

The novel works on many levels—including the sociological and the mythic—and can serve as a primer both for adepts and for those who’ve never seen a cricket match.

Pub Date: May 8, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-55597-611-8

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

bookshelf

IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

bookshelf

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

bookshelf

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.