Torsten KrolCritiques

Uno di questi giorni è successo che girovagando su Internet mi sono imbattuta in questo libro post-apocalittico. Il titolo ha stuzzicato i miei neuroni, così mi sono letta la trama. Il passo successivo è stato: devo leggerlo. Una delle mie migliori decisioni di lettura mai prese.

In generale, è stato un cazzotto continuo nello stomaco. Pensate che Hunger Games sia brutale? Robetta in confronto a Il libro segreto delle cose sacre, che più che mostrarci massacri, ci scuote nelle nostre fondamenta.

La trama, così come lo stile, è estremamente semplice, in parte prevedibile, ma si tratta della semplicità che deriva dalla consapevolezza di non aver bisogno di orpelli per trasmettere il proprio messaggio.

La protagonista, una dodicenne di nome Aurora - Rory, come la chiamano -, ci racconta gli eventi in prima persona ed è forse uno dei personaggi meno simpatici di cui abbia letto. Invidiosa, egoista, arrogante: il tipo di personaggio che, se ve lo trovaste davanti, non esitereste a prendere a schiaffi per tutto quello che dice. Eppure... eppure vi troverete vostro malgrado ad ammirarne la forza, perché, quando tutte cederanno, il suo orgoglio la porterà a puntare i piedi - anche dopo aver perso tutto.

C'è davvero tanto in questo romanzo, tanti spunti di riflessione disseminati qua e là, pronti ad attecchire nella mente del lettore e a farlo riflettere. La simbologia di Sole-Luna e Terra-Mare darà modo all'autore di affrontare il tema del rapporto tra i sessi senza mai scadere nella banalità e colpendo duro. Un libro da leggere assolutamente se amate il genere distopico.

Apart en soms een beetje bizar boek. Odell Deefus is een wereldvreemde man die niet de aller slimste is. Als hij met motorpech ergens rond het stadje Callisto strandt begint een avontuur, waarbij Odell van de ene rare situatie in de andere belandt. Hij klopt aan bij een huis en de bewoner, Dean, vraagt hem binnen. Als Dean wel wat van auto's af weet maar het deze avond al te donker is om goed te kunnen kijken wat er aan de hand is, brengen de mannen een aangename avond door met sterke drank en bier. Odell ontdekt een pas gegraven graf in de achtertuin waar hij van Dean niet had mogen komen en denkt dat dat graf voor hem bedoeld is. Als Dean hem die nacht op een onaangename manier wakker maakt, slaat Odell hem neer met een knuppel. Hij brengt Dean naar zijn slaapkamer en slaapt verder op de bank. De volgende ochtend blijkt Dean dood te zijn en wordt Odell door een bezoeker voor Dean aangezien. Er komt terrorisme om de hoek kijken en Odell probeert iedere nieuwe situatie zo goed mogelijk te doorstaan of te veranderen, maar het loopt vreselijk uit de hand, waar bij de FBI betrokken is en een paar andere geheimzinnige andere overheidsinstanties. Het boek is in een bepaald ritme geschreven. Ik vond het wel wat hebben, maar het blijft bizar.½

Odell Deefus is niet de slimste, en dat weet hij zelf ook, maar hij is wel groot en sterk. Hij gaat op weg om zich in Callisto aan te melden bij het Amerikaanse leger. Hij krijgt echter autopech en wil om hulp gaan vragen bij het eerste het beste huis. De bewoner Dean Lowry is een vreemde vogel. Hij heeft in de achtertuin een graf gegraven en Odell vermoedt dat het voor hem bedoeld is. Toch blijft Odell bij Dean overnachten...
Wat volgt zijn allerlei bizarre gebeurtenissen. Odell komt steeds verder in de problemen; veelal door zijn goedgelovigheid en domheid.
Het verhaal wordt in de ik-vorm verteld door Odell. Daarbij gebruikt hij verschillende tempora (werkwoordstijden); soms zelfs meerdere in één zin. En verrassend genoeg maakt dat het verhaal erg levendig.
Het is een zeer humoristisch verhaal; ik heb vaak zitten grinniken. Lezen!½

This book was bizarre, but in a good way. I couldn't put it down and read it all in one day. At times I questioned some of the author's choices at the beginning, but by the end they all had a purpose.
The book is very dark and gruesome as Erich Linden and his family try to survive in the jungles of Amazonia, however it is never dull even for a second. I was enthralled from cover to cover and enjoyed reading Erich's struggle to hold everything together while questioning right from wrong. After all, in the end, "A parrot is not a bat."

Brilliant! Who is this guy??? Has anyone heard that he has a new novel coming out?

I honestly don't know what to make of this book. I can't even really tell if I liked it.
It was certainly a slow read, and I was annoyed many times throughout, but I kept reading, so that has to mean it kept my interest ... right?

What a great, strange read. Exactly my cup of tea. No predictable plot elements or one-liners in this coming-of-age tale. The only off-putting element is the gauche narrator, a teenage boy. Be prepared for lot of mentions of farts and tits and penises.

A Nazi widow takes her two sons to Venezuela to join their uncle, a former SS doctor in hiding - and on the way their plane crashes into the jungle. To survive, they must live off the charity of an Amazonian tribe who believes them to be shape-shifting dolphins, thanks to the quick talking of a batty old anthropologist who has been living there over a decade. Many strange and awful things occur which cause the narrator Erich to realize all the Nazi propaganda he was taught is completely wrong.

This book went so many places I was not expecting (that’s a good thing, too many books are predictable). At first it was pretty funny, told from the limited point of view of a sheltered and spoiled 12-year-old Aurora. She was very believable in her self-important brattiness… not a very sympathetic character, but I kept reading because I thought she was going to get her comeuppance with the arrival of the new girl Willa. (How *dare* she be named Seer instead of me!). I agree with other reviewers that the church, the men, the male-female relationships are overly simplistic… but you have to remember who is telling this story and how limited her understanding of the world is. I actually like dramatic irony.

Wow, the book takes a very grim turn and Aurora’s entire life is changed in ways I never could have imagined at the beginning. She changes and grows up a bit, but there is no miraculous transformation of her character - which would have been totally unbelievable – she’s a bit of a brat until the bitter end. Reminded me a teensy bit of the movie “Saved” ( I am filled with Christ’s love!! You’re just jealous!) and a bit of the self-righteous Tracy Flick from “Election” by Tom Perrotta (by the way, if you haven’t read this, run out RIGHT NOW and get a copy).

Al momento non puo' essere *bellissimo* nel senso di anobiana definizione, ma è a un tanto cosi'. Usare senza annoiare un linguaggio volutamente poco forbito e a volte sgrammaticato, per 400 pg, non è da tutti.
In piu' fa sorridere, fa pensare, fa provare emozioni - perchè è vivo, e Alberto Sordi, con 'Detenuto in attesa di giudizio', qualcosa deve averci insegnato. K. si sara' nascosto nell'outback australiano, ma il fatto che una traduzione di questo libro possa arrivar fin qui fa ben sperare - circa la traduzione del prossimo.

Great book. Incredible narrative voice: naive, sympathetic, absurd. Excellent sociopolitical satire. Important.

Krol has a reputation as a brilliant, reclusive author, who isn't read by many but his few constitute a cult following. I won't be joining the cult: this book sucked.

Rory is living in, essentially a convent of moon-worshipping women, who rule over a valley in a post-apocalyptic world. The apocalypse, in this case, was a large asteroid hitting the moon sometime in our near future, a couple hundred years past for Rory. The asteroid knocked the moon out of its proper orbit, putting it on a much more eccentric elliptical route around the earth in which it passes very close every seven days (I take this to mean that the 'month' is now two weeks long). About halfway through the book, the Earth, which took heavy damage from all the debris (hence, destruction of civilization), and has been somewhat unsteady in its orbit for some time, suddenly drops over on its side so that the North pole faces the sun., some sort of delayed effect of the centuries-earlier impact. Yeah, right.

This was not the only yeah-right moment in the book. The women who founded this colony were people of our near future, but I can't really imagine people of our near future believing these things (our narrator, Rory, is in charge of writing the name “Selene” repeatedly to keep the moon in the sky – seriously?). This village in the mountains and a fishing village several days away appear to contain the only remaining people, and the stories from the time of the asteroid don't mention any other survivors, either. Again, yeah, right.

Krol seems to be given a lot of credit for insight into the human condition, and human responses to extreme situations, but I didn't find anything terribly insightful or original here in that respect.

The most original part of the book is that it's told through the voice of Rory, an egotistical, fanatical, twelve-year-old girl. Downside: he's captured her voice really quite well, so you have to suffer through her narration throughout the story (she seems to start growing up about halfway through, but quickly reverts). I'm really glad that I wasn't much of a diary-writer at that age.
There's really nothing to recommend this – if you want post-apocalyptic fiction, go read Atwood, or Orwell, or...

Brilliant! I love this book cover to cover.

Una storia che non nego sia originale, ma con personaggi esasperanti, che vorresti schiaffeggiare dall'inizio alla fine del romanzo. A mio modo di vedere l'unico capolavoro di Krol è il suo primo romanzo, Callisto, dove ironia e scene surreali la fanno da padrone.

At first, I thought The Dolphin People was going to be just another decent read. The premise was intriguing enough, and I was surprised by the characters' Nazi leanings and wondering how that would figure into the story. I didn't particularly like the characters; Zeppi, the younger brother, was babyish and immature, while Erich irritatingly fluctuated being naive and pusillanimous with thinking he was so grown-up and mature. When the family first crash-landed in the jungle, the time sequence was compressed and then confusing, lending a rushed feeling to the unfolding of the plot as the characters adapted.

But, given the rest of the book, these are small inconveniences found only at the beginning. The rest of the novel - both writing and story - is pretty amazing. I found it hard to put down, because I simply had to keep reading in order to find out what happened next. The plot wasn't necessarily fast-paced as much as it was just utterly intriguing and engrossing. I expected the novel to have almost a magical, enchanted feel to it (blame the odd plot synopsis and the cover), yet the readers' first encounters with the Linden family and the Yayomi are fairly gritty and realistic. Increasingly, though, as madness, love, and desperation set in, the almost bizarre sequence of events did allow for that pleasant aura of distance which I so love. The events of the book are entirely within the realm of possibility, yet their sequential occurrences seem so improbable as to give an almost magical realist feel to the story - without any actual magic, of course.

Add this to my list of favorites for this year!½

The Dolphin People is not a great book. I'm not sure what I was expecting from it, but I was very disappointed. I couldn't relate to it in any way and it wasn't crazy enough to bring me into another world. The graphic nature of this book is understandable and reasonable. I don't think I will read anything else by this author though. The writing was not that good.
http://dedesyearofbooks.blogspot.com/

At any rate, I really liked this delightfully interesting novel. The Dolphin People is narrated by Erich Linden who is a sixteen year old who travels with his mother and younger brother Zeppi to Venezuela. Erich's father has died fighting on the side of the Nazis in World War II. Erich's mother will now marry Klaus, her late husband's brother who has fled to Venezuela to avoid prosecution as a Nazi. And this is only the beginning!

After changing their last name, the new family takes a flight to the interior of Venezuela where they will live. Unfortunately the plane crashes and the four must figure out a way to live with the Amazonian tribe they encounter. The family learns the culture of the tribe via another white man, Gerhard, who has lived with the tribe for many years. To save their lives, the family members pretend to be dolphin people, almost gods who had been expected by the tribe. As time passes, the family must do more and more bizarre things to continue the ruse. I will not spoil the fun by telling you the results!

Odell Deefus ends up in the middle of what becomes a national security nightmare that he has nothing to do with. He's not smart enough to do any of the things he's accused of, but in his Forrest Gump-like way, he is just charming enough and just lucky enough to get himself into and out of the awfullest scrapes I've ever care to read about. This book made me laugh out loud and squirm uncomfortably and skim pages carefully, scared of what might happen next. This book makes a powerful statement about the role of government in our post 9/11 society and the paranoia that leads us to find terrorists EVERYWHERE, even in the most unlikely places.½

Dit boek lees je in één adem uit.

Very odd but thoroughly enjoyable tale of the wrong dumb guy in the wrong place. A farce about America in the 2000s that rings true more often then not. OdellDeefus is a brilliant character, though not so brilliant himself, and his stumble through crime, terrorism and the criminal justice system doesn't seem that far from reality. Those who like Chuck Palhaniuk, John Lethem and their ilk should give Krol a try, unless you are a George Bush supporting Republican, then you might want to stay very far away from this..½

Torsten Krol (a nom de plume for a midwestern author who does not want to reveal his name) was extremely depressed about his recent divorce and decided to "...rectify my lamentable situation by pouring scorn on a target worthy of my ire. No, not my ex-wife—George Bush and his attempt to carve himself a slice of history at the expense of ...just about everyone!""

Right about now, you should be examining your political leanings to decide if this book is for you, because he ain't kidding about the pouring scorn part.

Krol's story introduces us to Odell Deefus, a big, dumb hick who decides to enlist in the Army to fight against the "mad dog Islamites." On the way to the recruiting station, his car breaks down and he finds himself accidentally mixed up in a murder and not-so-accidentally involved with drug smuggling. These would be bad enough (if the police knew about them) but he is also mistaken for a terrorist by Homeland Security, deported to someplace suspiciously like Guantanamo where the expected things happen, and completely unable to contact the object of his major infatuation, Condaleezza Rice, to explain things. The whole thing becomes a giant, satirical look at a bureaucracy that distorts reality to conform to its beliefs.

Wickedly pointed humor that's wickedly funny. I loved it.½

Very amusing page-turner. I quite enjoyed it.

Non è male, ma secondo me non raggiunge le vette esplorate con 'Callisto'.

Favolosa presa in giro dell'atmosfera post 11 settembre. Odell Deefus, persona piuttosto ingenua, per non dire rimbambita, vive un'avventura allucinante e ce la racconta a modo suo, con parole sue. Da non perdere !!!

Callisto is the story of Odell Deefus, a Forrest Gump type fellow whose life turns out more like you would expect for someone “who’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.” Instead of the fairy tale cascade of happy accidents that happened to Gump, for Deefus there is instead a nightmarish spiral of darkly evil developments. The book is intended as a black comedy/satire, but the cruelty exhibited toward Deefus can be discouraging and depressing.

Deefus serves as a foil for Krol to expose the inanity of the Bush Era, from the hypocrisy of the religious right to the encouragement of torture at Abu Ghraib, to the invasion of everyone’s privacy by a plethora of self-important government agencies. Deefus – twenty-one years old, simplistic, good-hearted, gullible, and slow to catch on to a bad situation, sets out for an Army enlistment office in Callisto, Kansas. His car breaks down, and he has the bad luck to ask for help at the home of Dean Lowry, a drug dealer with possible Muslim affiliations, possible homosexual tendencies, and a big open grave sitting all ready in his back yard. Deefus’s bad luck careens out of control, even as it is juxtaposed and opposed by implication to the fate of Gump. Both characters were able to attain a bit of peace and fulfillment from the simple job of mowing the lawn, and they both become deeply entangled with the government and its war. But whereas Gump becomes a hero, Deefus is thrown into the jaws of Hell.

Some of it is very funny, such as the fact that Deefus carries a torch for Condoleeza Rice (and keeps her picture in his wallet). Some of it is over the top (would anyone really think Deuteronomy was "Jewteronomy" or that Revelations was "Revolutions"?). But most of it is an unfortunately sad-but-true look at the crueler side of the world. The writing in the Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo section is excellent. You can't help liking Deefus. But his story is reminiscent of the one the biologist Nicholas Tinbergen told about how strong fish will gang up and attack a weaker one.

Do I recommend it? I'd have to say yes and no. If you, like my husband, loved the movie "Fargo" and thought it was full of biting wit and satire, you probably will like this book. If you, like me, liked some parts of "Fargo" and appreciated its art but thought that overall it was mean and depressing, you might try something else.½

Krol’s supporting characters are also robust and well-described. His evangelists’ rhetoric is so right on that one must wonder if he’s stayed up a few too many nights watching TV preachers, but then he also seems to master the demeanors of cops and military personnel and curious locals, and it becomes clear that he is just a really great, hilariously witty writer.

I’m not sure if I would have picked up Callisto on my own, but I am certainly glad that I accepted it for review and have the opportunity to share it with you. This isn’t one of those books that everyone is going to love, but, as Publisher’s Weekly said best, “readers of a certain demographic (hint: they’re not driving to the recruiter’s office) will enjoy the romp.” If you enjoy satire, offbeat humor, and biting wit, you should definitely take Callisto for a spin. There’s no telling whether it will become a classic, but it is the closest thing I’ve found to our generation’s Catch-22, and that’s saying something.

Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog. ½