The powerful period detail compensates for the rocky marriage between haunting theme and creaky plot.
Swampy hideaways and a Mississippi paddlewheel steamer factor in this story of a 1921 child kidnapping, from Louisiana author Gautreaux (The Clearing, 2003, etc.).
Sam Simoneaux was a baby when his Cajun farming family in Louisiana was massacred by a clan of Arkansas outlaws, the Cloats. The sole survivor, Sam was raised lovingly by his Uncle Claude’s family, yet still felt incomplete—a key concept here. In New Orleans, he would marry and have a son, who died young. In France, arriving after the Armistice, he accidentally wounds a French girl during a cleanup operation. Back in New Orleans, on his watch as a floorwalker in a department store, a small girl is kidnapped and Sam is fired. The missing Lily forms part of a melancholy triptych for Sam, along with his dead son and the French girl. Lily’s parents, the Wellers, are musicians on an excursion boat plying the big river. Sam signs on as a bouncer, motivated by the desire to make another family whole again. A hot lead brings him to the Skadlocks, knavish rednecks living deep in the woods. They did the dirty work for the Whites, a rich, childless Kentucky couple. By revealing their identity upfront, Gautreaux robs his story of some suspense; it doesn’t help that the Whites are bloodless, one-dimensional creations. There will be several treks through the woods as Ted Weller and his teenage son get involved, and an unconvincing climax at a tiny railroad station. Sam is an appealing protagonist, goodhearted to a fault, though his late decision to confront the Arkansas Cloats (beside whom the Skadlocks are sweethearts) is wholly out of character. Where Gautreaux does score is in his depiction of life onboard, the hard grind of breaking up hillbilly fights while the band plays on.
The powerful period detail compensates for the rocky marriage between haunting theme and creaky plot.Pub Date: March 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-27015-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 2025 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.
