Atwood (Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, The Handmaid's Tale, etc.) here adds two new stories to a collection first published in her native Canada in 1983. Together, these 12 lackluster tales give little indication of her proven talents as novelist and poet. If the dullness seems uncharacteristic, little else is. Atwood peoples her stories with familiar types—artists, political activists, middle-aged professionals, housewives—and subjects them to the vicissitudes of contemporary domestic relationships. In "Loulou; or, The Domestic Life of the Language," the earth-mother of the title, a productive potter by trade, supports a houseful of male poets, all of whom were either her lover or husband at one time or another, and none of whom seems to respect her for much more than her willingness to look after them. "Uglypuss" pokes fun at the efforts of a radical couple to maintain a politically correct approach to modern love. Other stories concern marriages that are either fragile ("Scarlet Ibis"), foundering (the title piece), or undergoing redefinition ("The Salt Garden"). "Two Stories About Emma" profiles a courageous woman who fancies herself invulnerable, while "The Sunrise" proves that another woman's "slightly weird behavior"—she's an artist who approaches strange men on the street to pose for her—barely compensates for a life without love. The best story, "Spring Song of the Frogs," follows Will, a fellow who's "not very good at relationships," and who manages to bring out the anorexic in a number of women, including a niece who's hospitalized for not eating and an old girlfriend who sneaks off to purge a romantic dinner. Four anecdotal pieces, full of "significant moments," record memories of the narrator's parents and provide some fascinating glimpses into Canadian provincial life. Through most of Atwood's undistinguished second collection of short fiction runs her feminist sense of angst and alienation; occasional stabs at mitigating humor mostly miss their mark.
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1986
ISBN: 0385491042
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1986
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
