Award-winning novelist of Irish history Thomas Flanagan (The Tenants of Time, 1988, etc.) sets his new novel, as densely packed and relentlessly thorough as usual, in the turbulent 1920's, an era whose legacy lingers today in strife-ridden Northern Ireland. The complex story is told in alternating chapters by such characters as Patrick Prentiss, a barrister who lost his arm fighting for the British in World War I; Janice Nugent, a young Irish widow whose husband died fighting at Gallipoli; Christopher Blake, a historian and soon Janice's lover; and the mysterious Frank Lacy, a ruthless soldier whose bedtime reading is Virgil. As is typical in docufiction, a slew of real characters such as Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, and Eamon De Valera, speaking often in their own words or at least uttering sentiments in keeping with their reputations, make numerous appearances to add gravitas to the narrative. Beginning in the spring of 1918, members of Sinn Fein, survivors of the 1916 Uprising, and supporters of Irish Independence form the Irish Republican Army and begin a war that is fought on all sides with ruthless ferocity. The notorious British ``Black and Tans'' are just as savage as the IRA in mounting ambushes, exacting reprisals, and burning enemy houses. As the war continues, Frank Lacy achieves stunning military successes, Christopher Blake does brilliant intelligence work, while Prentiss and Nugent observe and comment from the sidelines. The story, though, is dominated by the legendary and beloved Michael Collins, a man of a thousand disguises and daring ruses. For signing an accord with Britain in 1921 establishing the Irish Free State, Collins is regarded as a traitor by diehard Republicans and is assassinated. A nasty little war with even nastier consequences, deftly described with enough details to satisfy those who prefer their history lightly spritzed with fiction.
Pub Date: April 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93681-5
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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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