by Amy Lecouteur ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2009
A richly descriptive debut novel that evokes English farm life in the post-World War I period.
Lecouteur’s debut novel reveals family and farm life in England during the period between the two World Wars.
The novel plunges readers straight into the dynamics of the Thomas family: Fred, his wife, Dorothy, and their four daughters. Fred is a World War I veteran settling into farm life, and Dorothy, the daughter of a well-off farmer, is more comfortable working in the family’s dairy than she is keeping house. As the Thomas’ face the trials and tribulations of running a successful farm in the remote English countryside, they must also grapple with the challenges faced by every Brit during the period between the two World Wars: economic hardship, war-ravaged infrastructure and a rapidly changing society. The characters themselves, however, are not as quick to change. Dorothy remains entrenched in Victorian values and Fred is portrayed as hard-working but emotionally disengaged. Regardless what they exhibit publicly, these characters have rich inner lives, which the author depicts poignantly; Dorothy’s personal disappointments are particularly resonant, especially her wish for a son and the post-partum depression she experiences after giving birth to her youngest child. But readers may struggle to connect with her character: Dorothy is not particularly likable or endearing, and tends to browbeat the other members of her family. Fred doesn’t come off much better, content to let the battle rage between mother and daughters. The strength of this tale lies in its descriptions of farm life. Whether recounting a failed crop or the arrival of new poultry, the author offers readers a glimpse inside early 20th-century farm life and how that pans out for a group of women thrust into traditionally male roles. That said, the descriptions of rural life can be quite lengthy and pedantic; whole chapters are dedicated to the rearing of various farm animals, housework and a survey of the surrounding farmland. Impatient readers may be put off by the author’s attention to detail.
A richly descriptive debut novel that evokes English farm life in the post-World War I period.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2009
ISBN: 978-1449035143
Page Count: 592
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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