A sweeping, suspenseful murder tale that offers enough atmosphere, subplots, and vibrant secondary characters to make...
A feud between the Mabry and Millard families in Ridgeway, Arkansas, leads to three murders, with consequences that haunt two families for five decades
In his new novel, McRaven (Build Me A Tower, 2016, etc.) explores life in the back hills of Arkansas, where it takes a special kind of inner strength and resolve to survive the soul-crushing poverty. Nate Prescott was orphaned at the age of 12 when both his parents died in an automobile accident. His mother’s younger sister, Andy (Millard) Henry, recently divorced from her cheating, truck driver husband Cam, takes Nate in and devotes her life to watching over him. Andy’s older brother Charlie, a fun-loving, irresponsible troublemaker, is also the beneficiary of her love and loyalty—at least whenever he returns from his latest adventures, usually broke. Andy and Nate manage to scratch out a bare subsistence on the dirt-poor farm that is Nate’s inheritance. Then there is wealthy, and bitter, Barry Mabry, who has never forgiven Andy for once rejecting him as a suitor. Now he contributes to the common gossip that she is a fallen woman because she divorced Cam. As the story opens, Charlie, Andy, and Nate are cutting down three trees that the Mabrys believe are on their side of the property line, rekindling a feud between the two families. When Barry is brutally murdered, Charlie and Andy are targeted as suspects. By the time two more killings are added to the toll, Andy and Nate realize they must flee the county in the middle of the night, selling off or leaving behind what meager possessions they have. The chase is on. Although the story features plenty of tension, the pace of the narrative is rather relaxed, with McRaven pausing to indulge in vivid descriptive passages that add color and texture. Of Nate’s grandfather, he writes: Elijah “was almost a caricature of the backwoods preacher, aging, with that beak of a nose that arrived places well before the rest of him.” But the frequent use of local dialect (“Don’t s’pose you’ns got a piece of hick’ry”), especially in the early sections, delays the process of sinking into the plot comfortably.
A sweeping, suspenseful murder tale that offers enough atmosphere, subplots, and vibrant secondary characters to make readers enjoy the leisurely pace.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944962-28-9
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Secant Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
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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