Next book

TRANS-ATLANTYK

Born in 1904, Gombrowicz was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1968, a year before his death. This largely autobiographical novel, published in Paris in the 1950s, will sorely disappoint the international readership that embraced his celebrated Diary (Vol. I, 1988; Vol. II, 1989). Calling the novel Gombrowicz's ``greatest accomplishment as an artist,'' Stanislaw Baranczak (Polish Literature/Harvard) explains in his introduction, that it is written in the form of a ``Baroque nobleman's oral tale, known in the Polish tradition as gawda.'' In such tales, the protagonist's self-deprecating adventures are supposedly conveyed for entertainment. (For American readers, a better comparison might be to a cautionary tale or medieval allegory.) The novel opens in 1939, when Hitler was about to invade Poland and many residents were fleeing. Arriving in Argentina with little cash, the narrator (who shares the author's name) goes directly to the Pan Minister in an attempt to find work. The Minister pays no attention until he learns the man before him is an author, at which point he hires Gombrowicz to crank out propaganda. Against his better judgment, the writer is thrust into a competitive literary society comparable to the old Japanese courts in which poets matched wits. Feeling demeaned (whether by his benefactors' jokes at his expense or because propaganda is beneath him), Gombrowicz proceeds to mock people he's introduced to, winning their hearts with such gibberish as: ``I don't like Butter too Buttery, Noodles too Noodly, Millet too Millety, and Barley too Barley.'' The inverted grammar and frequent capitalizations make it difficult for contemporary readers to follow the action, let alone laugh. French and Karsov include a pronunciation guide and a glossary of words they felt would be lost in translation. One can't help wishing they'd thought twice about translating the book at all.

Pub Date: May 18, 1994

ISBN: 0-300-05384-3

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994

Categories:
Next book

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

Categories:
Next book

SEE ME

More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...

Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.

Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?

More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.

Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

Categories:
Close Quickview