Overall, a satisfying sequel that will engage readers with its characters and the depiction of rural England during World...
A look at the trials and tribulations of family and farm life during World War II.
Lecouteur (The Brook Runs Free, 2009) reintroduces readers to the Thomas family in this sequel. Emotionally, not much has changed for the Thomas family, especially the Thomas girls. The mother, Dorothy, remains a strict taskmaster unwilling to take on any of the added work while the father, Fred, appears only engaged in the farm. In detailing a family with more than six children, Lecouter does an excellent job of establishing the sibling dynamics and differentiating each of the Thomas girls. Readers will feel sympathy for the overworked Mary, who works as a land girl on the farm, as well as the headstrong Grace, who wishes to be free from her mother’s control. In the midst of the characterization of the Thomas family, Lecouteur introduces a number of different plot developments that bring some of the reality of the war home to the farm. The Thomas family is left to deal with a number of wartime realities including rationing, farm subsidiaries, evacuees and an extreme labor shortage. The novel does a solid job of maintaining a balance between developing individual characters and portraying the overall environment of farm life during World War II. On the one hand, readers will find the same lengthy descriptions of harvesting and farm work found in the previous novel; yet not even the farm is kept away from the realities of World War II, with fighter planes and soldiers practicing maneuvers around the English countryside. The novel reads at a faster pace than its predecessor largely due to the added depth of the characters. However, readers looking for a starker, more dramatic depiction of World War II might wish to look elsewhere because the novel doesn’t depict graphic descriptions of battles or fighting. Instead, readers experience the war through the eyes of characters living in a setting far removed from the bombings of London and other urban areas.
Overall, a satisfying sequel that will engage readers with its characters and the depiction of rural England during World War II, although it may put off readers looking for a graver, serious historical novel.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4490-5362-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.
“Not a Cinderella story.”
Baldwin’s loosely written memoir is about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage to a celebrity, being the target of gossip and criticism, the experiences of neurodivergency and bilingualism, and more. “When Alec and I met, I was twenty-seven and he was fifty-three,” she writes. “Now, it’s nearly a decade and a half later….People always ask me: What is life actually like with seven kids (and an Alec)? It’s amazing and chaotic.” This book comes on the heels of the first season of the family’s reality show, The Baldwins, seemingly designed to answer the same burning question. While the author seems like a nice, well-meaning person, one comes away from this memoir hoping the television version, with the story sculpted by professionals, is the more entertaining response. Given the fact that there has been controversy about Baldwin’s background, perhaps she should have written a straightforward autobiography. But she has not, and the reader might need to do some research to understand the nature of some of the attacks she writes about. The veracity of her Spanish identity has come under fire, as her birth name is Hilary, she was born in Boston, and is not of Latine descent—but you won’t learn those facts from this book. The author’s relative youth, her choice to have her sixth child via surrogate, and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of a colleague on a film set have all been media fodder. She discusses several specific nemeses without naming them, which is not very interesting. “I grapple with the question: Why am I here in the public space? Why am I ‘relevant’? Am I here because an actor fell in love with me? Am I here because I’m a yoga teacher and have things to say about mental and physical health? Am I here because I had a lot of kids?” It’s not clear that she knows, and neither will you.
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781668009987
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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