Cloying and pretentious.
A famous, progressive, aging South African writer salutes all the women he has loved in this latest from the famous, progressive, aging South African Brink (The Other Side of Silence, 2003, etc.).
It’s 2003, and 77-year-old Afrikaner novelist Chris Minaar is losing his two greatest loves: his mother (Mam), and a beautiful sculptor, Rachel Lombard. Mam, only occasionally lucid at 102, is about to die in her nursing-home; and Rachel has died already, from brain injuries, the result of a brutal highway murder. Their stories are interwoven through those of the other women Chris has known, but it’s Rachel’s that predominates. They had met by accident. Rachel was married, happily, to George, a globe-trotting photographer, and her relationship with Chris was platonic, but nonetheless intense. They talked incessantly and unabashedly about love, its connection to time, the nature of orgasms and so on. Chris also hit it off with George, and the three became best friends. This did not stop Chris from rhapsodizing about what Rachel exemplified: “The taste of women, which is beyond the taste of fruit and wine.” Before Rachel, there was Daphne, Bonnie, Aviva, Nicolette . . . it’s a long list, but Chris denies he’s playing a numbers game. For him, each woman is unique and irreplaceable, but that’s not all; Chris the anti-apartheid activist declares, “every turn . . . of history over the last century, I could mark with the memory of a woman.” This makes for contrivance, as when the assassination of Prime Minister Verwoerd spurs his marriage to Helena. It’s his only marriage, and it ends horribly. Arguing with her about his latest infidelity, he causes a car accident, killing Helena and their young son. Chris is curiously reticent about the tragedy, no doubt because it shows him in a bad light; elsewhere, he presents himself as a sensitive lover, never insistent, always willing to let go; there’s also the implication that he must have been one helluva stud.
Cloying and pretentious.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-4022-0866-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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