Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis.
A humanitarian doctor becomes embroiled in the Rwandan genocide.
Schafer (A Different Kind of Fire, 2018), “a retired family-practice physician,” plumbs the depths of the genocide in Rwanda with this rousing novel that follows Dr. Jessica Hemings, whose volunteer medical mission to the country in 1991 carries life-threatening danger. The story opens as Hemings races through the mountainous forests of Rwanda and Tanzania after her Kirehe clinic is ambushed by a vicious militia. In Rwanda, she horrifyingly views the slaughtered bodies of innocent villagers and vows justice. Running alongside this main narrative are the escapades of Parisian war correspondent Michel Fournier, who is assigned to cover the ethnic discord in Rwanda, a place he’s never visited. He has not experienced the volatile political climate there between the Hutu and Tutsi populations. Also featured is Hemings’ still-smitten ex, Tom, who discovers she has vanished in Africa. Not for the faint of heart, Schafer’s descriptions are graphic and as real as the political strife and civil war that played out in East Africa. Equally crisp is her storytelling as the narrative flashes back to Hemings’ uneasy arrival in Rwanda and her ensuing culture clash and political education, reflecting that “there was no escape from racism, even when only one race was involved.” After she notices the clinic’s lead physician, Dr. Cyprien Gatera, becoming neglectful to Tutsi patients, he is exposed as a Hutu radical and assaults and rapes Hemings, claiming her as his own. She escapes and remains on the run for weeks, as depicted in the novel's beginning, until reaching a Tanzanian refugee camp where she aids the ill and ultimately makes a decision to place herself in lethal danger again to save others. Though the book is lengthy and teeming with exacting, grim details, the story moves swiftly, portraying Hemings’ interactions with Fournier that become intimate. They empower her with the fortification to return to Africa after resettling in Philadelphia and concoct a reckless revenge plot against Gatera. There’s plenty of sharp, suspenseful action to savor here in this impressively poignant, hauntingly realistic, and searingly moving tale. Schafer intensively explores themes of racism, violence, war, and human welfare.
Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64316-597-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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