A quick, bracing tale of chivalry.
In this debut novel, a brave knight faces betrayal in medieval Ireland.
Daniel is a knight and one of the most intimidating men to don armor in 14th-century Ireland. He is a fighter of great skill and the sworn protector both of his home village and his dear love, Cassandra. But he has also promised to protect the realm, so when word arrives from the king that able-bodied warriors must speed to Galway to defend the land from marauding Viking hordes, Daniel saddles his trusty black horse, Macha; whistles for his valiant brown dog, Balor; and rushes off to fight for the kingdom. Yet when he arrives at Galway, Daniel learns that he has been duped. Village life hums along smoothly, and there’s not a barbarian in sight from shore to horizon. Racing back to his hometown, he finds his cottage a smoking wreck and his beloved disappeared. He soon vows: “She is gone, but I will right this injustice. I will seek out those who have done this.” And as the story unfolds, every time he feels he’s getting closer to solving the enigma of the fire, the plot thickens and the mystery grows. This gripping tale is a model of economy and thrift. O’Doherty has trimmed all the fat and gristle, and what remains is a satisfying, speedy read that weighs in at just under 170 pages. Yet the author never sacrifices depth or detail, adding distinctive flourishes. He makes the most of his slim volume, building a realistic historical simulacrum of the Emerald Isle. O’Doherty’s style is only marred by one tiny tic that shows up just frequently enough to be distracting: He has a tendency to repeat himself. Thus, he tells readers at the outset that Daniel’s dog, Balor, “matched the speed and endurance” of his horse and that “the three had often traveled from encampment to battlefield over the years.” Then, several pages later, he writes of his horse’s “extraordinary speed and endurance, which could be matched by Balor. The three had often traveled in this manner from encampment to battlefield over the years.” But such oversights likely speak to O’Doherty’s lack of a strong editor.
A quick, bracing tale of chivalry.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5462-1916-3
Page Count: 178
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.
Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.
Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it, permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George Washington's book of moral and social codes, this novel documents with breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.Pub Date: July 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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