Blood Kin: A Novel [Hardcover]

Ceridwen Dovey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2008

A president has been overthrown by a military coup in a nameless country in an unspecified era. The president’s barber, chef, and portraitist are imprisoned, with many others, in a remote palace in the hills high above the city center. Before the coup, these three men worked with unquestioning loyalty, serving the president in seemingly benign jobs. Now, forced to serve the country’s new leader, they begin to reconsider their role in the old regime.

In simple, elegant prose Blood Kin alternates between the voices of the barber, the chef, and the portraitist. Later in the book their wives, lovers, and daughters tell their own tales. As the old order falls, so does the veil that hides the truth about these men and women’s secret passions. No one, it seems, is entirely immune to the many temptations of power.

Ceridwen Dovey’s debut is a welcome addition to the important tradition of allegorical writing about political upheaval and personal guilt. Her clever, magnetic story will resonate with fans of J. M. Coetzee, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Anthropology doctoral student Dovey's smart debut novel traces events in the lives of three functionaries in the entourage of the president of an unnamed country who is overthrown by the Commander. Dovey divides the book into three sections. The first section is devoted to the three men: the president's chef, barber and portraitist. The second section is told by three women: the chef's daughter, the barber's late brother's fiancée and the portraitist's wife. The third section operates as a coda, bringing about a second coup. The Commander imprisons the three men in the presidential residence, thinking, at first, of punishing them as subordinates to the old regime. (The portraitist's wife is also imprisoned, for reasons that are obvious to everyone but the cuckolded portraitist.) However, as the Commander samples the chef's food and the barber's skills, he softens his stance toward them. As for the portraitist, he proves too pathetic to punish. Meanwhile, the barber and the Commander's wife commence a dangerous affair, and the chef tries to figure out how to use it to his advantage. Dovey's prose gives the events an air of magic and allows this small, fable-like story to plainly illustrate the old axiom about power's ability to corrupt. (Mar.)
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From The New Yorker

In this elegantly structured début novel, the deposed president of an unnamed country is imprisoned in his residence with, among others, his chef, his barber, and his portraitist. These three servants, awaiting their fate, reveal, in alternating chapters, their ties to the president and their reasons for serving his corrupt regime. Dovey connects her main characters to the president first through their work—their tasks of feeding, grooming, and painting give them an uneasy intimacy with the president—and then through various women in their lives. The narratives of these women, halfway through the book, expose the full extent of the president’s depravity. In lively, straightforward prose, Dovey gets to the heart of the complicit nature of the master-servant relationship, in which "power and desire couple effortlessly."
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First U.S. Edition edition (February 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670018562
• ISBN-13: 978-0670018567
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,576,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The blood line of political corruption, March 14, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Kin: A Novel (Hardcover)

When we think of the corruption of power, what typically comes to mind are the monsters of history: the dictators, the generalissimos, the presidents-for-life. While it's true that these sorts who do the most obvious damage, it's also true that, if power corrupts, it negatively affects everyone who benefits from it. In her Blood Kin, Dovey demonstrates just how far the blood line of political corruption extends by focusing on the lives of three of its indirect beneficiaries: the portraitist, barber, and chef.

These three characters remain unnamed throughout the entire novel--as is appropriate, first because they aren't luminaries but rather "ordinary," anonymous people; second because they're everyperson--they're you and me--in their capacity for being corrupted through association. In the novel's second part, these three anonymous voices are joined by three more, this time female. Moreover, none of the characters in the novel are named, neither the dictator whose political fall land the six members of the Greek chorus (so to speak) in turmoil, nor even the country where all this is taking place. Again, these details don't matter, because the country is everycountry.

One of the especially fine qualities of this novel is its willingness to wrestle with fundamental questions about human decency in the face of evil. The barber, painter, and chef, for example, each represent one possible response to tyranny: the barber is a coward, the painter pretends to be above politics, and the chef is a thuggish, willing collaborator. Given that these characters are everypersons, they serve as mirrors for readers that ask of us our own responses.

The eerie anonymity of the novel's characters and place gave me a taste, sometimes, of Kafka. The sparseness of language reminded me occasionally of Dovey's fellow-countryman, Coetze. The sheer absurdity of the characters occasionally reminded me of Lewis Carroll (especially, for some reason, his poem about the Walrus and the Carpenter). But the book, a modern passion play, is all Dovey's. I look forward to reading more of her.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo!, April 8, 2008

By 

Gary W Moore "Gary W. Moore" (Bourbonnais, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Kin: A Novel (Hardcover)

I have reached a point in life where not much is left that surprises me. Blood Kin surprised me. It is gripping tale and in depth study of how absolute power corrupts absolutely and how those in the vicinity of the corruption corrupt themselves in their efforts to survive. It is not light, happy reading but a book that will challenge your senses and stimulate your mind to look at the world from another angle. Blood Kin is a timeless book that I believe will be read for generations.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, March 7, 2008

By 

Erica "Porta-Potty Avoider" (St. Paul, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Kin: A Novel (Hardcover)

I recently read this book and found it to be an enjoyable read. It is, perhaps, not the most original book, but it is engaging and well-written. My only minor complaint is that there are a lot of narrators (the narrators are constantly shifting from chapter to chapter) and I started getting them confused towards the end. Yet I have to admit, I am not immune to the charms of the idea of an unnamed country in an unnamed continent as a tool to illuminate aspects of the human condition (something like Ann Patchett's 'Bel Canto'). And I ended up copying a rather lengthy passage into my commonplace book (journal where I keep various quotes):

"From the earliest years of girlhood, it had been the dominant mystery in my life - whom would I marry? And when? - and suddenly it was solved, overnight, and the unseen force that had propelled me onward all those years wilted. I think that's why people stop caring when they get old: there are no more mysteries to solve; you know what job you've chosen, whether you've had children, how many, girls or boys, what their names are, what childbirth feels like, where you're living, how much money you earn, who your husband is, what he does, how often he makes love to you, whether your face wrinkled at the eyes or the mouth first. And then you get old enough to start putting pressure on younger people to solve their mysteries, because deep down you want them to suffer the same slow creep of boredom that you did."

I am certain this will prove to be a useful quote to me in the future, perhaps when someone I do not like too well proposes to me or an old person bugs me about having children. Here's to preserving (at least some of) life's mysteries!