A classic case of overreaching, though one that’s often moving and provoking.
Versatile Mosley tells the story of a black man dead before his time who shakes up the divine order by refusing his condemnation to Hell.
Tempest Landry is walking up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem, minding his own business, when a police officer takes him for an armed robber he’s pursuing and shoots him dead. According to St. Peter, Tempest deserves eternal damnation not because of the robbery—the heavenly recorder doesn’t make such errors—but because he stabbed a schoolboy who was about to shoot him, stole church funds to buy his sick aunt groceries and told lies that sent an incorrigible rapist and killer to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. When Tempest respectfully dissents, Peter sees no alternative to sending him back to earth, accompanied by a heavenly accountant who takes the name Joshua Angel, until he accepts the divine judgment. Back in Harlem, however, Tempest is no more pliable than he was at the gates of Heaven. In a series of brief chapters, he keeps remonstrating with Angel that although he may not be perfect, he hasn’t done anything all that bad either. Each chapter is launched by a new narrative premise: Tempest finds that his wife has taken up with another man; Tempest attends the funeral of an ancient family friend; Angel finds himself falling for a woman Tempest has introduced him to; the Devil, in the form of someone named Bob, appears and demands Tempest’s soul. But the core of the tale is the anti-catechism that emerges from the dialogues between man and angel. For all the audacity of his imagination, Mosley (Blonde Faith, 2007, etc.) is no theologian. He seems unaware of either the centuries of catechetical literature or the dozens of deal-with-the-devil stories that precede his own entry.
A classic case of overreaching, though one that’s often moving and provoking.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-57478-043-7
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Black Classic Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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