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
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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