A fresh portrait of a familiar troubled era, but, careful reconstruction that it is, it works better as history, falling...
A Catholic official tries against all odds to live under a Puritan regime in 17th-century England.
In a different age, John Brigge would have been called a collaborator. A coroner and governor (i.e., town councilor) in rural northern England, John was raised by a devout Catholic mother who had lost friends and favor when she publicly refused to renounce the old faith. John is not nearly so brave, preferring to make a pretense of conforming to the Church of England while secretly holding to the rituals of his ancestors. It’s a risky compromise even so: The rise of the Puritans to power in the early 1600s has intensified the religious conflicts throughout England, and a succession of bad harvests has resulted in widespread poverty and even famine. Scapegoats are in demand, and religious fanatics are quick to expose them. The local authorities in John’s county are staunch Puritans who themselves only recently overthrew the venal Lord Saville and set up a strict campaign against public corruption and private vice, and, although John is well-liked by the new governors, he has kept his distance, living in retirement with his wife, Elizabeth, and avoiding public controversies. When a young woman in the district is accused of infanticide, however, John is summoned to investigate. Although the evidence points strongly toward the woman’s guilt, John insists on a proper inquest in accordance with the law. This brings accusations of disloyalty, and, when the accused woman begins to win a following in prison by speaking against the governors, the town fathers smell sedition in the air. John is compromised already by his religion. Can he be, like Thomas More, the king’s good servant but God’s first?
A fresh portrait of a familiar troubled era, but, careful reconstruction that it is, it works better as history, falling rather flat as fiction. This is Irish author Bennett’s fourth novel but second to appear here (after The Catastrophist, 2004).Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-5856-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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