Romantic and tumultuous adventures that vividly distill a century of battles for women’s equality.
A novel follows several generations of women in a lineage inspired by an ancient amulet.
Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on New York City’s Rockaway Peninsula. Seventeen-year-old Maya Jones arrives at the Sea View Nursing Home to rescue her 105-year-old great-grandmother Maddy Rosario. Maya instructs Maddy to bring only important keepsakes, including a portrait of her mother and some framed pictures. There’s also a crystalline amulet—which can’t be found. When the women get stuck in the nursing home elevator, the narrative flashes back to 1905, to the life of Madeline Gallacuty, who’s been branded hysterical and is receiving the dismally confining Cure. While confined to her room for six weeks, she finds a crystal pendant hidden in her vanity’s drawer. An accompanying note says, “Know who you are,” signed, The Whale Rider. Once wearing the pendant, Madeline summons the strength of character to forge her own path in life, marry the man of her choosing, and become an advocate for women’s equality. Later, the meteorite-infused crystal ennobles Maddy, a fun-loving 1920s girl; Marjorie Berthe Hansman, a midcentury painter; and Mary Jane Johnson, a women’s libber active in 1970s India, to focus their talents and make strides for gender equality. Culler (101 Ways Your Mother Said You Could Die, 2015, etc.) uses a tense framing sequence to invigorate glimpses into eras when women were considered delicate, obedient, and often beneath notice. The flashbacks are rife with pointedly heartbreaking moments, as when Madeline’s cousin Lucy Fleming tells her, “Your highest duty in marriage is to suffer and be still.” Culler emphasizes not only the feminist, but the humanist perspective as well when World War I veteran Martin Amberfitch thinks: “Surely it was time to rebuild the world, not wallow in its distracting luxuries.” The nested tales are so lovingly rendered that readers will likely wish for further flashbacks to illuminate the lives of the Celtic Queen Cartimandua—in whose tomb the jewel originated—and Mr. Gallacuty’s part-Maori stepsister, The Whale Rider herself.
Romantic and tumultuous adventures that vividly distill a century of battles for women’s equality.Pub Date: Feb. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-63521-6
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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