A flawed but entertaining thriller set during America’s tumultuous beginning.
A debut novel tells a fictionalized version of the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps.
The year is 1775, and young Joseph Grimm is adrift in Philadelphia, feeling “the pull to wander” and “to see new places.” The city is, of course, a turbulent place: war has broken out, and the Continental Congress scrambles to assemble a military force to face the British. A Dutch merchant and family friend rails against the British royalty and unfair taxes, urging Grimm to fight for the cause of liberty (“the cause needs such as you so desperately”). Seeking purpose and adventure, Grimm joins the newly formed Continental Marines. A grueling training period abruptly ends when he and his fellow Marines are deployed on a secret mission to protect the funding source of the future U.S. Navy. But the Continental forces face many enemies, including Maj. Marcus Phillip Calhoun, a British officer who seeks to undermine the fledgling Navy. Large portions of the novel are not actually Grimm’s story, instead relating the experiences of family, including the patriot’s sister, Gabriella; colleagues; and, most prolifically, Calhoun. He is an intriguing creation—at times cartoonishly fiendish as well as genuinely sympathetic (born to a lower-class mother, he rails against his own military valuing rank over merit). Arndt’s use of multiple perspectives adds movement and richness to the novel—as when intense military confrontations are told from opposing viewpoints—but sometimes the device muddles the narrative (for example, the chapter on Gabriella). While the book’s first third gets bogged down in overlong or sentimental back stories, later portions have a pleasant propulsion as the thriller-esque plot churns along. But Grimm’s storyline eventually feels flat in comparison to Calhoun’s, as the Marine, loyally following his superiors, becomes more of an awed observer than a decision-maker. The tale also veers into simplistic mythmaking (the author sometimes depicts the British, their sympathizers, and the Iroquois enemies of Grimm’s family as physically or spiritually deformed). As in scores of works set in this period, there is oddly little acknowledgment that many Revolutionary leaders owned slaves. Still, the novel strikes true notes of historical complexity, revealing the tensions based on class and region within the Continental cause. Ultimately, Arndt conveys a vivid sense of the overwhelming odds the Continental Marines faced as well as the scrappy ingenuity and bravery they demonstrated.
A flawed but entertaining thriller set during America’s tumultuous beginning.Pub Date: March 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4808-2803-2
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Chicana writer Castillo (whose reputation until now has been mostly regional) brings a warm, sometimes biting but not bitter feminist consciousness to the wondrous, tragic, and engaging lives of a New Mexico mother and her four fated daughters. Poor Sofi! Abandoned by her gambler husband to raise four unusual girls who tend to rise from adversity only to find disaster. ``La Loca,'' dead at age three, comes back to life—but is unable to bear the smell of human beings; Esperanza succeeds as a TV anchorwoman—but is less successful with her exploitative lover and disappears during the Gulf War; promiscuous, barhopping Caridad—mutilated and left for dead—makes a miraculous recovery, but her life on earth will still be cut short by passion; and the seemingly self-controlled Fe is so efficient that ``even when she lost her mind [upon being jilted]...she did it without a second's hesitation.'' Sofi's life-solution is to found an organization M.O.M.A.S. (Mothers of Martyrs and Saints), while Castillo tries to solve the question of minority-writer aesthetics: Should a work of literature provide a mirror for marginalized identity? Should it celebrate and preserve threatened culture? Should it be politically progressive? Should the writer aim for art, social improvement, or simple entertainment? Castillo tries to do it all—and for the most part succeeds. Storytelling skills and humor allow Castillo to integrate essaylike folklore sections (herbal curing, saint carving, cooking)—while political material (community organizing, toxic chemicals, feminism, the Gulf War) is delivered with unabashed directness and usually disarming charm.
Pub Date: April 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03490-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
Collins invokes both Voltaire and Defoe here, and she forges an unlikely but sadly harmonic connection with both these...
There’s betrayal, depravity, pseudoscience, forbidden love, drug addiction, white supremacy, and, oh yes, a murder mystery with tightly wound knots to unravel.
The citizenry of 1826 London has worked itself into near apoplexy over the sensational trial of “The Mulatta Murderess,” aka Frances Langton, a Jamaican servant accused of brutally stabbing her white employers to death. Though caught on the night of the murders covered with blood, Frances cannot remember what happened and thus cannot say whether or not she is guilty. “For God’s sake, give me something I can save your neck with,” her lawyer pleads. And so Frannie, who, despite having been born into slavery, became adept at reading and writing, tries to find her own way to the truth the only way she can: By writing her life’s story from its beginnings on a West Indian plantation called Paradise whose master, John Langton, is a vicious sadist. He uses Frannie for sex and as a “scribe” taking notes on his hideous experiments into racial difference using skulls, blood, and even skin samples. After a fire destroys much of his plantation, Langton takes Frannie to London and makes her a gift to George Benham, an urbane scientist engaged in the same dubious race-science inquiries. Frannie’s hurt over her abandonment is soon dispelled by her fascination with Benham’s French-born wife, Marguerite, a captivating beauty whose lively wit and literary erudition barely conceal despondency that finds relief in bottles of laudanum. A bond forms between mistress and servant that swells and tightens into love, leading to a tempest of misunderstanding, deceit, jealousy, and, ultimately, death. Collins’ debut novel administers a bold and vibrant jolt to both the gothic and historical fiction genres, embracing racial and sexual subtexts that couldn’t or wouldn’t have been imagined by its long-ago practitioners. Her evocations of early-19th-century London and antebellum Jamaica are vivid and, at times, sensuously graphic. Most of all, she has created in her title character a complex, melancholy, and trenchantly observant protagonist; too conflicted in motivation, perhaps, to be considered a heroine but as dynamic and compelling as any character conceived by a Brontë sister.
Collins invokes both Voltaire and Defoe here, and she forges an unlikely but sadly harmonic connection with both these enlightenment heroes in her gripping, groundbreaking debut.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285189-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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