A light, precisely observed novel.
A YA author’s nicely written adult debut novel blends historical richness and a fine sense of place to tell the story of a woman’s developing love for her husband—and for his Colorado farmland—over the course of six months in 1944.
In wartime Denver, Olivia Dunne becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with a departing American soldier. With the help of a local church, her father arranges her marriage to Ray Singleton, a beet farmer in faraway La Junta. Olivia’s first days on the isolated farm are awkward, and Ray, a shy, reticent man of good intentions, isn’t very adept at small talk. Precluded from contributing anything useful to the running of the farm, whose harvests are cultivated in part by labor from the local internment camp, Olivia takes long solitary walks. During one of them she meets Rose and Lorelei Umahara, Japanese-Americans from California who have been evacuated to confinement in Colorado. Young, enthusiastic, and passionate about butterfly hunting, the sisters introduce Olivia to the thriving, emotionally rich life of the camp. She keeps her friendship with the girls secret; Ray, whose brother was killed at Pearl Harbor, displays no fondness for the Japanese who work his farm. Creel does a delightful job of evoking first the dreariness of the Singleton farm and Olivia’s unnerving loneliness, then the slow ripening of her affection for Ray, a simple but profoundly kind and gentle man. Rose and Lorelei, meanwhile, hint that they have begun dating a pair of American soldiers, and Olivia drives them to meet the men in secret. But the “soldiers” turn out to be German POWs escaping with the help of the sisters, who make Olivia an unwitting accomplice. The author gives her heroine a satisfying emotional depth, moving Olivia through phases of affection and disappointment with assured confidence before closing with a tranquil scene after the baby is born.
A light, precisely observed novel.Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-91027-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Tedium is inevitable as we watch these Tudor heirs wait.
The bloodlines, if not the ambitions, of three Tudor sisters imperil their lives.
Gregory’s multivolume chronicle of the Tudor dynasty, with its emphasis on the women, now turns to the ill-fated scholar and Protestant reformer Jane Grey and her two sisters, Katherine and Mary, grandnieces of Henry VIII. Upon the death of Henry's sickly son, King Edward VI, Jane, through complex machinations on the part of Protestant nobles wishing to block the accession of papist Princess Mary, takes the throne of England. In a matter of days, as told in Jane’s first-person section—one of three, each narrated by a Grey sister—Jane is deposed by Princess Mary’s forces and, after several months' imprisonment in the Tower, beheaded. As a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, who has succeeded Princess Mary, Katherine thinks the Greys are out of danger until she marries her lover Edward "Ned" Seymour in secret, without royal permission. Through a drawn-out tragedy of errors, most ascribable to youth, bad timing, and political naiveté, Katherine and Ned find themselves in the following predicaments: he goes on an extended tour of France and Italy having been assured by Katherine that she is not pregnant, though she later learns that she is. Ned’s sister Janey Seymour and the officiating minister, the only witnesses to the marriage, die and disappear, respectively. Unable to reach Ned, who is not answering her letters, Katherine seeks help elsewhere but is universally rebuffed, then arrested; she gives birth to her son in the Tower. Katherine’s section of the book, the longest, drags: since she knows very little, her first-person point of view cannot enlighten the reader, who spends many pages mulling over multiple mysteries: why is Ned incommunicado? Will he return? Can Katherine prove her son is legitimate? Will Elizabeth pardon her? Etc. The third sister, Mary, due to her diminutive size, assumes she is beneath Elizabeth’s notice in all respects, but when she emulates Katherine’s mistake, she and readers are again forced into a limbo of pondering the queen’s next move.
Tedium is inevitable as we watch these Tudor heirs wait.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5876-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
An ambitious, absorbing caper that’s smartly paced, tough-minded and infused with emotional depth.
Mallon’s latest historical novel (after Bandbox, 2004, etc.) takes us back to the nominally peaceful mid-1950s, when the twin menaces of Communism and homosexuality were the real enemies of all things American.
Taking a page or two from Gore Vidal, Mallon juxtaposes the progress of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s vindictive Un-American Activities Committee with the (similarly verboten) “subversion” practiced by closeted State Department whiz Hawkins Fuller (of godlike face and form, and shifting loyalties) and the young naïf who worships him. Callow senatorial aide Tim Laughlin is soft-shelled meat for the rapacious sexual appetites of the “Hawk”: A gentle, good Catholic boy who hoped political life might make a man of him, he refuses—even in the confessional—to repent of the dark pleasures to which Fuller subjects him. Their relationship takes place over a span of several years marked by the Korean War’s conclusion, the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution and the looming national prominence of V.P. Richard Nixon and Sen. John F. Kennedy. Though the large load of exposition required is not always successfully dramatized, we do learn much about the major issues of the time, and Mallon proves adept at making complex geopolitical matters flesh by filtering them through the viewpoints and agendas of both his principal fictional characters and a lively horde of historical ones, including Washington columnist Mary McGrory, Joseph McCarthy’s duplicitous attack dog Roy Cohn and miscellaneous members of Congress. The fallout from power politics is vividly shown in its destructive relation to Tim Laughlin’s selfless love and vulnerable idealism, as the Hawkins Fullers of the world ride the bubble of their charm, over bodies too numerous to count.
An ambitious, absorbing caper that’s smartly paced, tough-minded and infused with emotional depth.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-375-42348-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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