A zesty, if flawed, historical adventure that’s worth a read to witness the love that the author lavishes on his characters...
In this first novel, Pollock takes his hero from humble beginnings in Colonial America at the end of the 18th century to the Sandwich Islands, where he becomes a warrior in the service of Kamehameha the Great, the founder of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Zachary Bower is born in a cabin on the frontier of the British colonies, not long before the start of the Revolutionary War. After the death of his mother, he’s sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Connecticut. His uncle Israel is the captain of the Setauket, a far-ranging merchant ship. Soon, young Zachary ships off with Israel’s crew, learning the ropes while heading to Spanish California. On shore leave in San Diego, he gets left behind and impressed onto another ship that’s heading to the Sandwich Islands. Here, the real adventure begins—as if rounding Cape Horn weren’t hair-raising enough. Zachary’s new vessel, the Fair American, is captured by the island’s residents, and only he and the first mate survive. Soon, along with a seaman from their sister ship, they find themselves the captives of the great leader Kamehameha—a well-known historical figure. Zachary, however, is fictional, as is Kaleo, a young Hawaiian who becomes Zachary’s minder and mentor; the comely Pua Lani, who becomes Zachary’s common-law wife, is also a product of Pollock’s pen. As Kaleo and Zachary become close friends, the latter proves to be a fearsome warrior in Kamehameha’s campaign to unite the people of the archipelago. The descriptions of the fighting are unbelievably savage and bloody, but finally result in sufficient victories and a peaceful interlude. Zachary becomes a father, and he’s accepted among the members of his new society (they call him “Koa Kai,” or “Sea Warrior”), and he’s also found peace within himself. The story doesn’t end there, but suffice it to say that some readers will find the final resolution to be very satisfying, while others may feel that Pollock caved to the temptation of providing a happy ending. The author, in his bio, notes that he’s been “an avid sailor for over fifty years” and his details of a ship’s rigging and maneuvers, and of sailing a vessel through horrendous weather, have the air of verisimilitude. He also fruitfully contrasts Zachary’s straight-laced Christianity with the life of the islanders. For example, Pua, at Zachary’s suggestion, simply agrees to be monogamous and live with him, but Zachary sometimes finds himself struggling with Christian guilt. The sailing scenes are truly riveting throughout, and readers will get a real feeling for the island paradise, with its mix of the idyllic and the brutal. That said, despite the author’s clear investment in this historical material, the text often suffers from idiosyncratic punctuation, as well as erroneous word choices or misspellings, such as “lien-to” instead of “lean-to,” “shuttered” instead of “shuddered,” and “windless” instead of “windlass.”
A zesty, if flawed, historical adventure that’s worth a read to witness the love that the author lavishes on his characters and their adventures.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4808-5934-0
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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