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A CLOSE RUN THING

Pompous oafs, a sly heiress, and a beguiling nun prove just as challenging as battlefield perils to a British cornet who plays a decisive role in Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon. Mallinson, a British cavalry officer with an impressive knowledge of spontoons, snaffles, and other minor arcana of 19th- century combat, offers an extremely detailed, alternatively violent and romantic first novel in a land-based, sword-and-horseflesh companion to Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring Aubrey-Maturin series. Hero Matthew Hervey is 23 when we meet him in 1814, one year before Waterloo, on the battlefield in southern France. The highly educated, polyglot son of a parson with vague connections to royalty has just bravely slaughtered a French gunnery patrol, yet has made the mistake of embarrassing a superior officer, General “Black Jack” Slade. Sister Maria, a gorgeous Carmelite nun who’s the daughter of a French count, rebandages Hervey’s wounded leg, then entrusts him with her father’s ring and a pack of letters to deliver to her ancestral home. With Napoleon abdicating, and the delivery accomplished, Hervey returns to England, where Lady Henrietta Lindsay, an old childhood friend, teases him about matrimony with obscure references to Jane Austen novels. He moves with his regiment to Ireland, where he gets in trouble by defending kindly peasants against corrupt British land agents. Lady Henrietta uses her titled connections to save Hervey from Slade’s wrath just in time for the regiment to rush back to the Continent, where Hervey finds himself included in strategy-planning sessions with the stalwart Duke of Wellington, who sends him on a secret mission to contact Prussian forces. After this somewhat wooden, overly chatty adventure, Wellington appoints Hervey as his aide-de-camp, with another mission in store. Some saddle sores from Mallinson’s affection for 19th-century turns of phrase, but, on the whole, a rousing, chastely nostalgic tale of valiant heroism and dashing derring-do.

Pub Date: June 8, 1999

ISBN: 0-553-11114-0

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999

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THE UNSEEN

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

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FIREFLY LANE

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...

Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.

Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3

Page Count: 496

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007

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