Even so, Sleigh crafts a monumental tale about momentous events on the edge of the known world, an effort resulting in a...
A sprawling historical charts the 1650 arrival of the Dutch in what is now South Africa and limns the troubles that followed.
Real-life figures stand at the heart of South African National Archives researcher Sleigh’s first outing, reputed to have been two decades and more in the making. Early on, one of those figures, Jan van Riebeeck, arrives at Cape Town as colonial governor for the Dutch East India Company and loses little time in transforming the native landscape while dreaming of better things to come: “Where this Fort is standing now, will be a big town one day.” His native opposite, also real, is the Goringhaicona leader Autshumao, known as Chief Harry to the English (and Herrie to the Dutch). Even once Herrie accepts the notion that there will always be Hollanders on his territory, and that “the whole world would be made different,” he is a most reluctant ally: He’d rather be speaking English, the only thing he has to barter. But the Dutch do business otherwise, and they soon war on the native peoples. Newcomers and indigenes die, and Herrie becomes the first prisoner on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela would later spend so many years. In turn, van Riebeeck adopts a Goringhaicona girl, the resonantly named Eva, mother of the colony’s first mixed-blood, a girl whom many love but few know. Sleigh’s ambitious tale, which weaves the lives of seven major characters and many minor ones into a packed and occasionally even crowded narrative, is far better written than the standard textbook, but it sometimes has a textbookish feel all the same; a reader without some knowledge of the South African past and an ability to keep track of Sleigh’s detailed subplots about the fates of doomed warriors and pensive women may soon feel lost.
Even so, Sleigh crafts a monumental tale about momentous events on the edge of the known world, an effort resulting in a major contribution to modern South African literature.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-15-101115-X
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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