Tragedy makes Jane Austen more relatable than ever in this concluding installment.
Jane Austen struggles under the burden of loss in the final volume of Hemingway’s (The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen: Volume II, 2016, etc.) trilogy.
In the first two installments, Hemingway reimagined the author Jane Austen as a young mother and wife, filling in the missing years of her historical record. Jane has adapted to marriage and the running of a household and acquired wealth and pregnancy; now, she’s exhausted. Her new son, George, requires her complete attention, and her relationship with her husband, Ashton, is at an all-time low. George also suffers from seizures, which triggers difficult conversations about inherited conditions on Jane’s side of the family. When tragedy strikes, Jane flees to that family, seeking refuge from her marriage and her sorrow. Her profound anger and sadness are incredibly moving, as Hemingway offers a more humanized version of Jane Austen than readers may be used to. She’s not the mysterious and gifted writer they know but a mother and wife haunted by loss, desperately seeking a path forward. Ironically, it’s death that finally brings Jane back to life and allows a reconciliation with Ashton. Determined to stay with him this time, Jane joins her husband and the British Army, who set sail for Spain to fight Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces. As the couple encounters new places and old enemies (the Lovelaces, last seen in the previous installment, reappear here to Jane and Ashton’s detriment), they’re continually faced with the terrible cost of war. After a long physical and emotional journey, Hemingway leaves us with Jane the writer, who takes back her voice after losing so much in her life. Although sorrow sweeps through much of this story, Hemingway’s thoughtful, well-written book also offers an incredibly moving portrayal of a young woman confronting love and loss. The narrative also touches on the political, technological, and cultural changes of the early 19th century, but the most successful portions involve the evolution of Jane as a woman and a writer. In the end, she muses, “I cannot go on as if nothing has changed, but I can go on.”
Tragedy makes Jane Austen more relatable than ever in this concluding installment.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-979472-76-0
Page Count: 338
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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