The novel sets out to take Daniel Boone from myth to man—but in the process, it transplants him into another sort of...
A thoroughly researched historical novel reimagines the life of 18th-century frontiersman Daniel Boone, transforming him into a brooding observer of the fall of a country he’d like to consider Paradise.
The first novel by short story writer Hawley (The Old Familiar, 2008) uses as a framework what is known of Boone’s life, beginning with his impoverished childhood in a Quaker community in Pennsylvania and ending, rather abruptly, as the Indians who have either, depending on one’s perspective, captured or adopted him prepare to attack the fort Boone and others have built in Kentucky. (A sequel is evidently in the works.) In between, Boone witnesses—and causes—many a death, marries, fathers a bunch of children, moves his family several times, sets off on hunts that last months or years, is captured by Indians, escapes, and is captured again. The close adherence to chronology makes for an episodic novel in which the only consistent character is Boone himself. The frontiersman tells his story, presumably from the point of view of old age but in the present tense. The world he describes, full of squalor and natural beauty and blood, is richly detailed, and the dialogue sharp and well-trimmed. Boone himself, however, often seems more literary device than believable character. Depressive and romantic, he is continually haunted by an increasingly crowded swarm of ghosts, beginning with the brother who died when Boone was an adolescent and the horse he had to kill when it broke its leg. While not much is known of Boone’s inner life, since he left few written records, his actions don’t necessarily jibe with the introspective, language-besotted dreamer Hawley creates, the one who often feels that he is living in “a long half-dream.”
The novel sets out to take Daniel Boone from myth to man—but in the process, it transplants him into another sort of literary myth.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-247009-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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