Readers may be reminded of the highly praised film Pelle the Conqueror (based on Martin Andersen Nexî's novel) by this evocative and brilliantly detailed picture of childhood, the work of the eminent Norwegian novelist (18901960) whose The Troll Circle previously (1992, not reviewed) appeared here in translation. The story's set in a farming community in rural Norway during the early years of the 20th century and focuses on young Anders, the fourth child and only surviving son of a prosperous landowner/banker and a charmingly doting mother. We observe Anders between the ages of four and ten, as he gradually intuits the existence of ``the world's end''—that is, all that lies beyond his own family's sheltered and limited environs. The novel is almost plotless and primarily episodic—and all the stronger for it. A snake is killed; a bull gets loose (and everyone hides from it inside the house); Anders breaks his ankle and enjoys the favored status of the invalid; he thinks he'll die of his unrequited infatuation with a handsome older boy; and, at last aware of the tremors of sex, he begins tormenting girls. Tales of trolls lurking in the nearby forest are juxtaposed with Anders's irreverent and deliciously comic notions about God. Hoel candidly portrays the thoughtless cruelty that's natural to children—most vividly in a harrowing sequence in which a group of mischievous boys ``accidentally'' drown a baby goat. And his prose—effortlessly translated into limpid, child's-eye-view English—unforgettably conveys the quality of life in a rigorously structured yet sustaining culture where parents and children, masters and servants, coexist on peaceful if unequal terms: a culture edging toward modernity though still defined in rural phrase and fable. This first English translation of Hoel's novel ends with Anders prepared to take to the road as he leaves home for school far away—and with the reader hopeful that this volume may prove to be the first of a sequence. An enchanting book.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-55713-210-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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