A charming Victorian-era tale of love, loss, and family connections.
A mysterious piece of music offers links to the past in Kennedy’s (Holybourne, 2017, etc.) latest historical novel.
Marianne Mandeville and her husband, Charles, enjoy a contented life on their vast estate, Winthrope. Loving, compassionate Marianne’s free-spirited ways charm her husband but vex her parents and mother-in-law, who wish that she were more formal and less generous with the Roma people who live on the estate. A talented pianist, Marianne is enchanted by a partially completed composition that she discovered on a trip to the village. When Charles dies in a horse-riding accident, Marianne is bereft. Devastated, she goes horseback riding in a storm in an attempt to end her life. After she’s thrown from her steed and knocked unconscious, she wakes to find a tiny miracle: a baby girl, the sole survivor of a tragic carriage accident. The only clue to the infant’s identity is a piece of music found in a nearby trunk. Titled “Georgiana,” the completed composition matches the partial one from the town. Marianne raises the girl, now named Georgiana, as her daughter, but as she gets older, the youngster wants to learn more about her family. The search leads them both on a remarkable journey to reunite a composer with his precious legacy. Inspired by the musical pieces “Algonquin Trails” and “Stormy Sunday” by composer Hennie Bekker, Kennedy’s novel is a keenly observed meditation on the love of a parent for a child and the healing power of music. Marianne is a beguiling heroine who’s shown to be committed to treating everyone, from her husband to her servants to the Roma living nearby, with compassion and dignity. Although he has a limited role, Marianne’s husband, Charles, provides an equal amount of love and understanding, and their scenes together are playful and passionate. In many respects, however, the novel is as much Georgiana’s story as Marianne’s, especially in the sections in which they search for Georgiana’s surviving family. The narrative moves at a steady pace throughout, with the composition “Georgiana” playing a key role. The strong supporting cast also includes Molly Bickers, Marianne’s beloved governess.
A charming Victorian-era tale of love, loss, and family connections.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945494-13-0
Page Count: 219
Publisher: Kennedy Literary
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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