Ireland’s history is well incorporated, but it’s the characters’ firsthand accounts that resonate the loudest.
Mack’s debut historical thriller centers on the O’Hare family in Ireland in the mid-19th century and Irishman Jack Danaher, who’s made his home in America in the 1980s.
Sean O’Hare and his wife and children, like others in their homeland, are dying from starvation and disease. Sean’s son, Paddy, decides whether joining the rebellion against the ruling English will help his country’s people. Later, Jack himself lives through much of “the Troubles” and endures Bloody Sunday, where his sister May is one of the protestors killed by British soldiers. The rebellion grows increasingly violent as the years pass. The Irish Republican Army buys arms in the U.S., and both sides, English and Irish, commit outright murder. The O’Hare plot is the more engrossing of the two storylines, centering on Sean’s family as they’re faced with a failing potato crop and harsh winters. It’s an ardent story that shows the family’s personal trials against the backdrop of a country in upheaval. The other half of the novel introduces numerous characters involved in the fight against England, including IRA members, but is a little less focused. Jack is just one of many men in the novel who may be killing loyalists. But he shares so much of the stage with other characters—including cousin Sean Curran and powerful, godfather-esque Jimmy O’Hare—that he isn’t a bona fide protagonist. He even reconnects with lost love Joanie, but the reunion is too short and pales compared with Paddy’s traditional romance—Paddy first asks permission from the father of his love interest before courting her. Still, there are unforgettable scenes, particularly Sean Curran and others in an Irish prison; deeming themselves political prisoners, they stage a hunger strike. The uncompromising ending, too, is both open and rather unnerving.
Ireland’s history is well incorporated, but it’s the characters’ firsthand accounts that resonate the loudest.Pub Date: March 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1483424613
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 7, 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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