Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Raitcliffe, as Moody makes very clear in the first short chapter of the novel, is a hero, "and if he's a hero, then heroes are five-and-dime, and the world is as crowded with them as it is with stray pets, worn tires, and missing keys." He is a saint maybe, like one of the exceedingly normal yet extraordinarily courageous and strong characters who populate the works of Anne Tyler; a modern day tragic hero whose Achilles' heel and fatal flaw is a penchant for liquor. Lou Sloane's abrupt and cruel parting from Billie rouses Hex from...
Only a cerebral Gumby would remain unsculpted by the mental body-building required to translate James Joyce's Ulysses into Mandarin Chinese. In spite of extensive time spent in Beijing doing just that, Patrick Kavanagh's latest project, his first novel, is not so stylistically influenced as one might think. Rather than plunging into boggy streams of consciousness, Kavanagh emulates Joyce's focus on style more than his actual stylistic techniques, resulting in an ornately wrought work with a commanding sense of place and experience...
Though the iceberg itself does not move, it sublimes in the multiplicity of the villager's interpretations, hardly solid as it is pushed into each individual's hopes and terrors. Though the place and time in which the novel occurs is limited to a single day in a very small village, what seems stagnant and solid as permafrost liquefies and then reforms as it is seen from each character's perspective. Just like the zone between the land and the sea that is never dry for the lapping waves, what seems neatly defined land and water mixes, leaving enough room...
Although Kavanagh's ability to portray the samesubject from many perspectives is practicedthroughout the book, as each characters react tothe weather, the turn of the sea and the creakingiceberg in a different way, his skill is mosthoned in his discussion of the novel's mostpervasive subject; the Roman Catholic Church...
...portrayal of the church is possibly themost interesting contradiction of the novel. Onone hand, the novel is deeply involved with theIrish Catholic tradition. His characters pray whenwake up, before they eat and when frightened. Theparish is the center of the village, educating thechildren, caring for the sick and ringing thebells that determine meals, sleep and work. At thesame time as the life of the village is steeped inthis tradition, though, there is the suggestionthat this religion is deadening, hypocritical andpossibly evil...