More of a rough approximation than an imaginative penetration of the period.
Motion, the distinguished British man of letters, has retained the two principals of Silver (2012), his robust sequel to Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but otherwise, this is a stand-alone frontier novel.
Those principals are young Jim Hawkins, same-named son of Stevenson’s cabin boy, and Natty Silver, the biracial tomboy daughter of rascally Long John and his Caribbean wife. Shipwrecked off Texas in 1802, the only survivors, they are captured by Native Americans (Red Indian “savages,” thinks narrator Jim), escorted through the wilderness to their settlement, and imprisoned. The fearsome chief, Black Cloud, sports a magnificent silver necklace, a power source, which Jim will steal after a surprisingly easy escape. His theft sets in motion a dilatory yearslong pursuit by the chief, the only throughline the novel offers. Jim and Natty ride away on stolen ponies. Though he has declared his love for her, he doesn’t act on it. At key moments it's Natty who's the decision-maker, leaving Jim a blank slate recording their impressions. “They made a very pretty picture,” concludes Jim, after they meet a much different, peace-loving tribe, and indeed Motion, a former poet laureate, provides many pretty pictures. Action is harder to come by. The English adventurers spend an idyllic two years with these friendly Indians, who offer sanctuary until Black Cloud reappears. They then throw in with some traveling entertainers, but their gig is interrupted by the chief, who is wounded but not by Jim; this further undercuts his position. More travel gets them to the climax in New Orleans. Jim has learned that Indians vary greatly, from fierce to friendly to destitute, but has he learned much about himself? To the recurring question of why he must keep that troublesome necklace, he can only answer “We’re like our fathers,” to which Natty assents.
More of a rough approximation than an imaginative penetration of the period.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3845-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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