From Elkin (The MacGuffin, Pieces of Soap, etc.), three novellas that limn with controlled passion and wry humor the anguish of disjointedness—of not quite catching "the beautiful ruin of the world and the other moving parts of vision." In "Sense of Timing," Schiff, an aging professor of political geography, crippled by a degenerative neurological condition, is abandoned by his wife on the eve of the day he's to give his annual party. As Schiff tries to cope with the physical realities of his situation, he also struggles to understand why his wife left him. Meanwhile, his plans to cancel the party are thwarted by his students, who insist they will take charge. As he watches with increased helplessness their terrifyingly wild goings-on at the party, he realizes that the "continued laughter and cackle was an absolute refutation of his existence"—an affirmation of his utter vulnerability. The second and least successful piece, "Town Crier Exclusive, Confessions of a Princess Manque," is certainly topical—as the ex-fiancÉe of the heir to British throne gives her version of why the marriage was canceled—but the humor is forced and the story hollow. In the title novella, Miller, a middle-aged teacher from an Indiana community college, is to be a fellow for five weeks at a foundation's center in Aries. There, he's given the room that once was Van Gogh's—the room in which the artist cut off his ear. Troubled by the strange food, his fellow academic luminaries, and Van Gogh's pervasive presence, Miller has a nervous breakdown, recovering just in time to see at last with his own "poor unrendering eyes" all the things he hadn't quite appreciated or understood before. All vehicles for Elkin's infectious delight in language, his ability to find a fresh way of looking at everything—from a take-out pizza to a Van Gogh painting—and his sense that life is more often than not a tragic joke.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 1564782808
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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