A stultifying amalgam of Peyton Place, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, The Return of the Native, and Tobacco Road. O Canada! O...
Toronto-based Richards (Mercy Among the Children, 2001, etc.), winner of multiple Canadian literary awards, strains both credibility and the reader’s ability to keep a straight face with this pullulating melodrama, published in Canada in 1998.
In an unnamed New Brunswick bayside town, pretty young Karrie Smith’s betrothal to farmer Tommie Donnerel is put on hold when Karrie becomes attracted to glowering Michael Skid, the ne’er-do-well son of a prominent judge. Michael, meanwhile, is smitten with gorgeous slut Madonna Braussard, who, with her Cro-Magnon brother Silver, earns an unpretty penny dealing “bad drugs”—which trade attracts the interest of satanic ex-convict Everette Hutch (“the swirling center, the black hole . . . [which] Madonna and Silver and Michael . . . were being sucked into”). A violent murder rattles the community, and the wrong man is convicted and imprisoned. A sneaky plot twist endangers the gas-station scam practiced by Karrie’s troglodyte parents. Everette crashes his motorcycle, and gives the reader a brief rest by lapsing into a coma. The plot thickens like month-old oatmeal, chickens come home to roost, the guilty are punished, justice delayed is not denied, and the innocent get married and talk it all over 20 years later. These beguiling absurdities are recounted in a burly, barely serviceable prose in which subjects and predicates often remain as far apart as feuding relatives estranged for decades (e.g., this side-winding sentence: “Is that how your new friends who we never see, and who never come to the house, and who all look like refugees, just like you, taught you how to be?”).
A stultifying amalgam of Peyton Place, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, The Return of the Native, and Tobacco Road. O Canada! O Mores!Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55970-650-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, eloquent exploration of faith and its response to the refining fire of life’s challenges.
Molded by their backgrounds and childhood experiences, the individual members of two couples adopt beliefs which will define them—until they are confronted by a heart-wrenching challenge.
Writing with restrained lyricism, Wall’s debut—15 years in the making—offers a kind of literary chamber music, combining the viewpoints of a quartet of characters across multiple decades and events. Charles, the son of a Harvard professor, is a man reliant on research and insight. James, whose drunken father was broken by war, will grow up to be full of impatience and the urge to action. Nan, the daughter of a Southern minister, has learned patience and generosity while Lily, orphaned at 15, is happiest when withdrawn. Charles’ unswerving love for Lily is matched by James’ determination to marry Nan even though neither couple seems a natural fit. When both men opt for a life in the church, Nan is better equipped for the role of clergyman’s wife than independent, brittle Lily, who feels no obligation to conform. The four eventually connect when Charles and James are offered the joint ministry of Third Presbyterian Church in Greenwich Village. Old-fashioned in tone and subject matter, the story is set in the mid-20th century and evokes some of the stifling social norms of the era. Wall has a very precise sensibility, and there is no escaping the sense of tidy predetermination in the clear, fixed positions of her four figures and their various oppositions, seen through the debates, struggles, rejections, and consolations that arise among them. Finely drawn and paced and written with intense compassion, the novel shifts ground with a late development that will test and push forward each of the four, leading to a conclusion consistent with Wall’s grace and control.
A moving, eloquent exploration of faith and its response to the refining fire of life’s challenges.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982104-52-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
PROFILES
Another triumph for Enright: a confluence of lyrical prose, immediacy, warmth, and emotional insight.
A daughter reveals the intertwined tales of her mother—a theatrical legend—and herself, a mature retrospective of sharing life with a towering but troubled figure.
Katherine O’Dell, star of stage and screen, blessed with beauty, red hair, and a gorgeous voice, “the most Irish actress in the world,” was not Irish at all. She was born in London, and the apostrophe in her name crept in by error via a review following one of her appearances on Broadway. However, the fact that Katherine is “a great fake” doesn’t cloud the love her daughter, Norah, has for her, a bond which exists alongside the unanswered question of Norah’s father’s identity, “the ghost in my blood.” The complexities of this mother/daughter relationship and its context in Ireland, the men it includes, and the turns both women’s lives take through the decades are the meat of this tender, possessive, searching new novel from Man Booker Prize–winning Irish novelist Enright (The Green Road, 2015, etc.). Saga-esque, it traces Katherine back to her parents, strolling players from another era who invited her on stage at age 10, scarcely imagining the luminous, internationally recognized figure this “useful girl” would become. But the novel is no fairy tale. Katherine’s life was marked with loneliness; disappointing, sometimes exploitative, and abusive men; the pressure of trying to remain successful; a desperate act of violence; and a breakdown. Norah narrates both her mother’s life and her own—she’s the author of five novels, a mother, a sexual being, and also the sole offspring of a parent she both adored and observed at a distance. Fame, sexuality, and the Irish influence suffuse the story, which ranges from glamour to tragedy, a portrait of “anguish, madness, and sorrow” haunted by a late, explanatory glimpse of horror which nevertheless concludes in a place of profound love and peace.
Another triumph for Enright: a confluence of lyrical prose, immediacy, warmth, and emotional insight.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00562-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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