A touching story of attachment to a beloved, troubled place.
In her debut novel, Lynch writes about the injustice of colonial rule and institutionalized segregation through the story of a young Goan tailor who moves to Africa.
As the novel opens in Goa in 1913, Sabby Mendes is a 15-year-old tailor’s apprentice. Hearing of people leaving Goa for East Africa, Sabby decides to try his chances in Kenya. Perhaps to reflect his youth, Sabby’s first-person thoughts are given in simplistic, sometimes clichéd language. For instance, he justifies his choice of Kenya with “it would be different, and I was ready to try something that was not like Goa.” He settles in Nairobi, where he eventually opens a tailoring business. He thrives professionally but remains lonely; luckily, it’s love at first sight for him and Trinia, the Goan woman his parents choose for his arranged marriage. Lynch successfully weaves in momentous historical events—Princess Elizabeth’s visit to Kenya, the Mau Mau Uprising, and Africanization under Jomo Kenyatta—as well as technological and cultural shifts. Best of all, she gives a strong sense of life in a three-tiered racial hierarchy: colonizers at the top, then Asians, and Africans at the bottom. Train cars are segregated, and Goans give up their seats at Sunday Mass to let Europeans sit in front. Racism is an unfortunate reality that only hits home for Sabby when his youngest daughter wanders onto a whites-only beach. The book’s scope is perhaps too wide, however, necessitating awkward indications of time passing. The insistent chronology seems more appropriate to a family memoir. Lynch grew up in post–World War II Nairobi, so likely this novel has autobiographical elements. A plodding pace and some punctuation problems don’t overly distract from the elegiac tone that follows a late bereavement and Sabby’s sense of displacement as more and more Goans, including his children, accept British passports and emigrate. He insists “my heart is here in Kenya,” and the tender finale proves it.
A touching story of attachment to a beloved, troubled place.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7485-9
Page Count: 282
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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