Here is one of the South's most gifted and versatile writers with a new theme, handled in- for him- a wholly new vein. It is a powerful and haunting and often distastefully crude portrait of a Kentucky hill community, caught up in mass hysteria when one of their young men, war hero Jasper Harrick, disappears in a newly discovered cave. He and the almost vicious son of the parson, Isaac Sumpter, had planned to make a commercial venture of it, a tourist trap- and Jasper goes exploring on his own- and does not come back. The story builds to a wicked crisis; in the process the venalities, the emotional instabilities, the susceptibility of the crowd to a taste for disaster and violence, and the capitalizing of overstrained emotions for virtually a religious revival as they wait at the cave entrance, add up to a cross-section of the people and a revelation of the skeletons in the cupboards-past and present. The Harricks- parents and sons- are central to the action, and much of their story one gets in flashbacks, recriminations; old man Sumpter, playing on the emotional hysteria, gets his converts, his public confessions — and then, put to the test himself, finds he cannot betray his son in the elaborate lie he has built about Jasper, with himself as hero taking in food and medicine to a man caught by a falling rock way back in the cave. For Isaac has not gone far enough to see; his father goes beyond, and learns the truth- Jasper is dead, but only just dead. Isaac, his son, is really his murderer. It is a tale of muted violence, uninhibited in language and raw sex, but absorbing in the subtle play of human emotions.
Pub Date: Aug. 24, 1959
ISBN: 0813191556
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1959
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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