An edgy, riveting tale, one of Prose’s most interesting.
A neo-Nazi abandons his Aryan supremacist buddies and joins a humanitarian relief organization.
When 30ish underachiever Vincent Nolan, perversely resplendent in shaved head and swastika tattoos, enters the Manhattan offices of World Brotherhood Watch, declaring himself “changed,” visions of unprecedented fund-raising success dance through the head of WBW founder and leader—and Holocaust survivor—Meyer Maslow (part Simon Wiesenthal, part Elie Wiesel). But Vincent’s presence—albeit polite, thoughtful, and nonthreatening—worries Meyer’s secretary-subordinate, single mom Bonnie Kalen, who impulsively agrees to take the skinhead into the home she shares with her sons, Max and teenaged Danny. Vincent is groomed as poster boy for WBW’s global efforts to combat human-rights abuses—as living proof that evil can be turned to good. This is a potent, however presently unfashionable theme, and Prose (Blue Angel, 2000, etc.; the nonfiction Lives of the Muses, 2002) expresses it in tingling dramatic scenes laden with pungent (often very funny) dialogue, as she depicts Vincent’s growing attachment to his host family, even as Meyer manipulates his new colleague’s conversion, and Vincent’s past reaches out for him. Not all the plot twists are credible, and it’s all probably too long. But it holds your interest, thanks to Prose’s deft use of present-tense narration and artful shifting of viewpoints, among Vincent’s honestly conflicted need to reinvent himself; Meyer’s posturing mixture of selflessness and vanity; Bonnie’s vacillations among competence, timidity, and her hunger for love; Danny’s obstructed progress toward maturity; and the anger nursed by Vincent’s cousin and neo-Nazi mentor Raymond, who knows Vincent is no saint and means to make him pay for his treachery.
An edgy, riveting tale, one of Prose’s most interesting.Pub Date: March 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-019674-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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
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