by Emma Donoghue ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2001
Irresistible, and deeply satisfying. Donoghue has surpassed herself.
This boldly imagined historical fiction—reminiscent, though by no means imitative, of both Defoe’s classic Moll Flanders and Margaret Atwood’s recent Alias Grace—represents a quantum leap forward for its Irish-born (now Canadian) author.
The antiheroine and protagonist is Mary Saunders, a young woman whose ingenuous lust for “fine clothing” (e.g., the “slammerkin,” which denotes both a loose gown and a “loose woman”) leads her into prostitution and murder. Donoghue (Stir-Fry, 1994; Hood, 1996) has triumphantly reimagined the life of a real historical figure of whom nothing is known beyond those few facts—beginning with Mary’s lonely London girlhood, and expulsion from her stepfather’s home when she becomes pregnant at 14; continuing throughout her thriving career as an “independent” whore, and retirement, as a charity-case “Penitent”; then climaxing at the country home of clothiers Thomas and Jane Jones, who employ and befriend Mary until her past rears its head and sets the servant against her masters in a violent and bloody resolution of their “differences.” It’s a harrowing, abundantly detailed chronicle of woman’s fate, sharply attentive to both class conflict and individual psychology, enlivened by such superbly realized figures as the willful child-woman Mary, her rough-hewn fellow prostitute and mentor Doll Higgins, and especially her eventual victim Jane Jones: a remarkable amalgam of silliness, benevolence, selflessness, and utter vulnerability. The story’s range of emotion and implication is further broadened by a masterly narrative choice: Mary’s doomed stay with the Joneses is shown through the eyes of all the characters who are affected, in fact afflicted, by her ingrained amorality and determination to have what she desires whatever the cost. Only in overstressing the weary half-truth that respectable married women and fallen women alike “sell” themselves to men does Donoghue stumble—and that’s a scarcely detectable blemish on a rich, vibrant canvas that brings the age of Hogarth and Richardson stunningly to life.
Irresistible, and deeply satisfying. Donoghue has surpassed herself.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100672-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
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by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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