Hauser's style is expressive, clever and compelling, and she offers readers a thoughtful and engaging debut.
Two young women trying to find their places in the world settle in a small coastal town in Maine and discover purpose, friendship and acceptance.
When Leah, a reporter, meets down-to-earth Henry Lynch in a New York City bar, she wastes no time resigning from her job, marrying him and moving into his family home in the small fishing community of Menamon. Leah’s filled with romantic notions about living an idyllic life and fitting in with the locals, but she soon discovers “from-aways” can’t easily dissolve barriers built by common roots and experiences. She also discovers there are things about Henry she doesn’t know and wonders if she fell in love with only the idea of him. Finding work at the Menamon Star, owned by her unfriendly sister-in-law, Leah meets wisecracking tough girl Quinn Winters, another recent transplant to the area. Quinn originally came to town to confront her father, Carter Marks, once a moderately successful folk singer who had an affair with her late mother, but she puts her plans on hold as she sorts through her different reactions to him. Instead, believing no one knows she’s his daughter, she remains in town, gets hired at the paper, falls in love with her roommate, and becomes a self-taught guitarist and songwriter. Quinn’s amateurish prose contrasts with Leah’s professional writing, but the two become drinking buddies and begin to collaborate on pieces. Soon they find themselves embroiled in a story about a building project that polarizes the townsfolk and threatens to change the nature of the entire community. Leah finds that her involvement might help her gain the acceptance she covets but could jeopardize her marriage. As events begin to spin out of control, debut novelist Hauser creates a palpable bond linking characters, readers, a community and a relevant political issue.
Hauser's style is expressive, clever and compelling, and she offers readers a thoughtful and engaging debut.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-231075-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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