The fans of Cookson's (My Beloved Son, 1993, etc.) subtle-as- a-calliope village melodramas, set in various periods near the banks of the Tyne, will be pleased to note that the empress of scullery tales is still at it. Here (18861921) are the beloved Cookson constants: ardent lovers corroding into mad old men and women; children neglected or abused; enterprising violence; and always, the village—``a rotten spiteful lot of buggers.'' And, of course, lasting True Love. The Maltese Angel was the stage name of lovely Fanny, who had danced in a Newcastle theater and attracted the passion of upright farmer Ward, who was fair and kind. (It was Ward who had rescued and raised the horribly abused orphan Carl.) Ward does marry Fanny, but there's village trouble. Bumptious Daisy, who'd been certain Ward would marry her, feeling jilted, vows revenge. (And does she ever carry through!) Ward and Fanny have two daughters: Jessie, whom Ward is never really able to love, and his beloved, fragile Angela. Fanny dies young, as a result of some fancy work with a catapult (instigated by guess who), and Ward is on his way to madsville. He reaches the end of his sanity when Angela is raped by three village men, loses her mind, and bears a baby daughter, Janie, whom Ward will try to kill (she's rescued by Jessie). Little Janie, maturing, hated by crazy Grandpa and crazier Mum, finds affection with nearby Lady Lydia and her gentle son Gerald, who will become a conscientious objector in WW I. Happy endings for all—even Jessie, whose beloved Carl (now widowed) proposes. Cookson has the storytelling ability to hold an affectionately tolerant audience as she chronicles the howling passions of her characters, who resemble likable-to-murderous third graders. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-89649-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A fine celebration of the many guises a short story can take while still doing its essential work.
Latest installment of the long-running (since 1915, in fact) story anthology.
Helmed by a different editor each year (in 2018, it was Roxane Gay, and in 2017, Meg Wolitzer), the series now falls to fiction/memoir writer Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See, 2014, etc.) along with series editor Pitlor. A highlight is the opener, an assured work of post-apocalyptic fiction by young writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah that’s full of surprises for something in such a convention-governed genre: The apocalypse in question is rather vaguely environmental, and it makes Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go seem light and cheerful by contrast: “Jimmy was a shoelooker who cooked his head in a food zapper,” writes Adjei-Brenyah, each word carrying meaning in the mind of the 15-year-old narrator, who’s pretty clearly doomed. In Kathleen Alcott’s “Natural Light,” which follows, a young woman discovers a photograph of her mother in a “museum crowded with tourists.” Just what her mother is doing is something for the reader to wonder at, even as Alcott calmly goes on to reveal the fact that the mother is five years dead and the narrator lonely in the wake of a collapsed marriage, suggesting along the way that no one can ever really know another’s struggles; as the narrator’s father says of a secret enshrined in the image, “She never told you about that time in her life, and I believed that was her choice and her right.” In Nicole Krauss’ “Seeing Ershadi,” an Iranian movie actor means very different things to different dreamers, while Maria Reva’s lyrical “Letter of Apology” is a flawless distillation of life under totalitarianism that packs all the punch of a Kundera novel in the space of just a dozen-odd pages. If the collection has a theme, it might be mutual incomprehension, a theme ably worked by Weike Wang in her standout closing story, “Omakase,” centering on “one out of a billion or so Asian girl–white guy couples walking around on this earth.”
A fine celebration of the many guises a short story can take while still doing its essential work.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-48424-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Though all the surface elements are in place, Picoult falters in her exploration of what turns a quiet kid into a murderer.
Picoult’s 14th novel (after The Tenth Circle, 2006, etc.) of a school shooting begins with high-voltage excitement, then slows by the middle, never regaining its initial pace or appeal.
Peter Houghton, 17, has been the victim of bullying since his first day of kindergarten, made all the more difficult by two factors: In small-town Sterling, N.H., Peter is in high school with the kids who’ve tormented him all his life; and his all-American older brother eggs the bullies on. Peter retreats into a world of video games and computer programming, but he’s never able to attain the safety of invisibility. And then one day he walks into Sterling High with a knapsack full of guns, kills ten students and wounds many others. Peter is caught and thrown in jail, but with over a thousand witnesses and video tape of the day, it will be hard work for the defense to clear him. His attorney, Jordan McAfee, hits on the only approach that might save the unlikable kid—a variation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by bullying. Thrown into the story is Judge Alex Cormier, and her daughter Josie, who used to be best friends with Peter until the popular crowd forced the limits of her loyalty. Also found dead was her boyfriend Matt, but Josie claims she can’t remember anything from that day. Picoult mixes McAfee’s attempt to build a defense with the mending relationship of Alex and Josie, but what proves a more intriguing premise is the response of Peter’s parents to the tragedy. How do you keep loving your son when he becomes a mass murderer? Unfortunately, this question, and others, remain, as the novel relies on repetition (the countless flashbacks of Peter’s victimization) rather than fresh insight. Peter fits the profile, but is never fully fleshed out beyond stereotype. Usually so adept at shaping the big stories with nuance, Picoult here takes a tragically familiar event, pads it with plot, but leaves out the subtleties of character.
Though all the surface elements are in place, Picoult falters in her exploration of what turns a quiet kid into a murderer.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-7434-9672-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
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