A book that offers pleasures of recognition and revelation for devoted fans of Jane Eyre.
Holmes’ (Alaska’s Wild West, 2014, etc.) historical novel re-examines Edward Rochester’s conflicted pursuit of Jane Eyre from Rochester’s perspective.
This retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s classic 1847 novel opens on Rochester’s first encounter with “Miss Eyre,” his ward’s governess—whom he notes “doesn’t look above a child herself, a fairy creature”—on the road to his ancestral home, Thornfield Hall. Although he’s soon captivated by Jane’s unflappable manner, unusual beauty, and paintings—“fierce, raw, full of nature’s violence and something more, something otherworldly”—he’s constrained by his marriage to the insane Bertha Mason, who’s hidden on Thornfield’s third floor. Although he deeply resents being tricked into marrying Bertha as a young man, he sees her confinement as a merciful alternative to an asylum where “the shackles never come off.” Overall, because this book’s plot and sensibility are so closely interlocked with Jane Eyre’s, it may be less rewarding for readers unfamiliar with the source material. For example, in addition to Rochester’s past, Holmes fills in new details about his estate management, showing his generous aspect as well as the practical details of Georgian country life, including the threat of his workforce immigrating to America. The novel’s frankness about Rochester and Jane’s sexual attraction isn’t uniformly graceful; for example, there’s something jarring about Jane communicating her breathless realization to Rochester that they will be joined “by [their] nether parts.” However, the author does enhance the sense of Thornfield as a grounded, vivid place. The first-person narration captures Rochester’s wry cynicism, juxtaposing it with his more vulnerable thoughts. As he and Jane become closer, he has increasing difficulty concealing the evidence of his wife’s violent rages. Bertha’s heritage “of idiots and maniacs” is compounded here by the revelation of multiple generations of incestuous family history. This further entangles Bertha’s madness with Gothic obsessions with sex, bloodlines, and purity; here, she’s rendered so monstrous that, for all his suffering, Rochester gets off the hook a little too easily for his attempted bigamy.
A book that offers pleasures of recognition and revelation for devoted fans of Jane Eyre.Pub Date: March 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9972741-0-3
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Legend Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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