A disappointing collection with two-dimensional characters prioritizes politics over story.
Three stories about Haiti that place women at the forefront.
Seghers (Stone Age, 1977, etc.) was a German Jewish writer who fled Hitler’s regime in 1933. In exile, she wrote a few novels about escapees from Nazi prison camps. They’re smart, politically savvy books, with all the drama and pacing of good thrillers. Unfortunately, Seghers’ last book, published in 1980 and now appearing in English for the first time, doesn’t live up to her early work. These stories are about Haitian women; each piece takes place in a different century. An erudite introduction by the scholar Marike Janzen insists that Seghers is giving voice to the voiceless, placing Haiti at the forefront of revolutionary history. That’s all well and good, but the stories themselves tend toward condescension. In the first, Toaliina, a young woman, dives from a ship that is attempting to transport Indigenous Haitian women to Spain in the 15th century. She hides out in a cave, where she is joined by her husband, Tshanangi. Then Tshanangi disappears, and his friend appears in the cave, seeking refuge. Toaliina, writes Seghers, “lived with this friend, not as happy as before, but without hardship. She bore him two children.” Perhaps the larger problem with this collection is that Seghers seems distracted by the political points she wants to make. The tone, throughout, is didactic—and not really conducive to storytelling. The characters devolve into mouthpieces for Seghers, and even the plots become muddled. An essay included in the collection describes the Haitian revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture, but even here, Seghers disappoints. The essay, which seems short on real, substantive research, rambles on without achieving insight. Taken as a whole, this volume might be useful to scholars of Seghers, but to a lay audience, it doesn’t do her reputation any favors.
A disappointing collection with two-dimensional characters prioritizes politics over story.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944884-63-5
Page Count: 107
Publisher: Dialogos
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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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