Another tale—but a fun one—about a plucky mountain woman who finds success in the big city.
A young Appalachian woman escapes to Chicago during the Jazz Age in this historical romance.
Nineteen-year-old Grace Langdon is the only girl in a large family in the Appalachian town of Stones Mill, Virginia. Her mother alternates between coldness and abusiveness while her miner father is just plain mean and violent. Gracie is saved by her love of books—Jane Eyre, in particular—and her best friend and cousin, Ollie. Gracie thinks she has little interest in marrying until her childhood friend Charlie Hillard returns to Stones Mill for his father’s final days. Despite her initial attraction, she soon realizes that Charlie is a mean drunk like her father and tries to warn smitten Ollie away from him. When Gracie’s father orders her to marry Charlie, she flees to her older brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Alice, in Chicago. As she builds a new life, she becomes involved with Jack and Alice’s friends and neighbors, the Shaws. Henry, the older brother, carries scars—both physical and psychological—from the Great War while his younger sibling has a sunnier personality. Attracted to Henry, despite his occasional dark nature, Gracie embarks on a musical and dance career in the Shaws’ nightclub. Her budding romance with Henry is threatened by her own mistrust of men, Charlie’s refusal to accept her rejection, and an unthinkable accident. Hawkins (The Tempest: A Gisborne Novel, 2014, etc.) skillfully evokes both the mountain and urban settings. But Gracie’s ability to quickly adapt to a surprisingly privileged life in Chicago after her humble upbringing seems unlikely. And some problems with characterization mar the otherwise enjoyable story. Jack morphs from an indulgent, cosmopolitan urbanite to an overprotective warden, with some bumbling new-father syndrome thrown in. Henry’s dark side—inspired by Gracie’s devotion to Rochester—is also occasionally troubling (someone should warn her that a moody rich guy is fundamentally the same as a moody poor guy), while the stereotype of the abusive Appalachian man is becoming a bit trite. At over 350 pages, the story drags, with increasingly improbable obstacles tormenting the lovebirds.
Another tale—but a fun one—about a plucky mountain woman who finds success in the big city.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 403
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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