It’s 1854, and a fragile 16-year-old girl is forced to leave England for Australia—an arduous voyage she is unlikely to survive.
Sarah Garnett, homesick, beset by nightmares and waking visions of the lover she longs for, is confined below decks with other unmarried women. Their life aboard the half-rotten ship is a delicately drawn parody of Victorian gentility: they fashion paper roses; promenade occasionally under the watchful eye of their stern chaperone; confide in each other, spy on each other, fight, and wonder about the unknown new world they sail toward. Madness is commonplace: the matron who guards what remains of their virtue has abandoned her own sons in New South Wales to pursue ghosts: her husband and baby died at sea and she can no longer live on land. A sailor who dared to cook and eat an albatross has gone completely insane, rolling in treacle and feathers and howling in misery. Disease is a constant threat, and an outbreak of typhus carries off more than one hapless victim. One of their number gives birth in secret to an illegitimate daughter, then dies within hours. The grieving young women open her trunk in search of mementos, and find only a moldering wedding dress. Manners and minds dissolve in the suffocating heat of the tropical latitudes, but Sarah clings to sanity by writing letter after letter to her parents, remembering her childhood idylls in the English countryside with her brother and sister—and with Richard, the cousin she was not permitted to marry. Imagining her pregnancy as a fish she swallowed that now trembles inside her, Sarah finally succumbs to a feverish madness of her own, lost in aqueous hallucinations. The irony of this is not lost on her: Mrs. Garnett, her mother, feared any contact with water, refusing even to drink it, but willingly set her daughter adrift on an ocean that the girl would cross but once.
An elegant, evocative debut, by a 26-year-old Australian storywriter.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-32160-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
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Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
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Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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