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摘要
摘要
In "Marchlands," Karla Kuban's stunning first novel, she introduces a troubled, intrepid, ultimately triumphant young heroine whose path to womanhood is both original and extraordinarily compelling. Living on a thousand-acre sheep ranch, fifteen-year-old Sophie Behr can ride for hours and not see another person; her closest companion, her horse, Pablo. And Sophie often roams to think -- about Demetrio, the Mexican ranch hand who helped make the baby growing inside her; about her mother and Aunt Alice, who drink every night while watching the television news, hoping to catch a glimpse of their sons fighting in Vietnam; and about her father, who vanished one day when Sophie was four years old. Sophie's mother -- tough, bitter, and unstable -- warns Sophie never to mention her father's name, but Sophie is compelled to find him and discover why he left. After a frighteningly violent reunion, she seeks refuge and illumination from her grandmother. At once child and woman, Sophie is a precociously wise observer of the tragedies of her own family and of the world. It is Karla Kuban's masterful sense of place and the startling cl
评论 (2)
Kirkus评论
A polished but unpersuasive first novel about a teenager coming to grips with her family and her pregnancy. Sophie Behr's narrative of 16 crucial months in her young life features spare, elegantly crafted prose and improbably knowing insights. The story begins in April of Sophie's tenth-grade year: Her brother and cousin are fighting in Vietnam, and other topical references pinpoint the time as the mid-1960s. But life on a Wyoming sheep ranch moves to eternal seasonal rhythms, and Sophie and her mother are locked in the ageless parent-child battle for control. Willy Chastain Behr converted to fundamentalist Christianity several years back, long after Sophie's father abandoned her, but she's still mentally unstable and drinking hard. The supporting cast includes Demetrio, the sheepherder who impregnated Sophie; Piraté, a sadistic ranch hand; Edwina, a rebellious transplant from Detroit whose friendship with Sophie strikes the book's one psychologically truthful note; and, eventually, Sophie's wandering father, who pauses long enough in Colorado for his daughter to visit and learn the shocking secret that drove him from Willy. Like the other acts of violence here (several directed against helpless animals), this revelation attempts to extort an emotional response from the reader that the characters have not succeeded in eliciting. The climactic events--Willy's descent into catatonia, Demetrio's departure because Sophie can't say she loves him--also seem like arbitrary developments imposed by the author rather than natural outgrowths of the material. Though a recent interview mentions her real-life experiences on a sheep ranch, the overly studied, airless quality of Marchlands makes it a prime example of Writing School Lit. Kuban, a recent Pushcart-winner, provides some lovely descriptions of the western landscape; it's too bad her characters aren't equally vivid.
《书目》(Booklist)书评
The setting is a 1,000-acre sheep ranch in the vast landscape of Wyoming; the story concerns one pivotal year in the life of 15-year-old Sophie Behr, a young woman searching for the truth about her family's past, even as she seeks to define her own future with the child she is carrying. Unable to tolerate the unpredictable behavior of her fanatically religious, alcoholic mother--who obsessively watches the nightly news broadcasts hoping to see her son, who is fighting in Viet Nam--Sophie flees the ranch in search of the father who abandoned her when she was four. She seeks to identify that part of herself that came from him, looking for the truth of why he left, hoping for connection. Kuban's heralded debut is perfectly rendered in the context of a particular time and place, yet is classically timeless, capturing that fleeting moment when the transition is made from childhood into adulthood. Sophie's matter-of-fact narration, endearing from the first page on, is masterful in its revelation of the layers of complexity inherent in self-knowledge. --Grace Fill