by E. B. Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2015
An appealing Amish twist on a classic narrative.
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In a second Amish-themed novel, Moore (An Unseemly Wife, 2014) spins her grandfather’s journey West into the rich tale of a prodigal son.
In 1882, 21-year-old Joshua revisits his Amish homeland for the first time in 10 years. The sight of the inscription on his gravestone—“Beloved Boy, 1872”—plunges him back into memories of the horrific day when he was 11 and fought with his alcoholic father, Abraham, causing a candle to fall over and the barn to catch fire. Joshua went on the run, leaving his mother, Miriam, and four sisters to presume him dead. Joshua’s decadelong search for home and identity, which eventually leads him back to New Eden, Pennsylvania, takes him to unexpected places, like a saloon and a prospectors’ camp, where his companions include a bar wench and a circus bear. Along the way, he avoids a number of unsuitable romantic dalliances and finds a few surrogate mother figures. Consistent allusions to the Bible and other classical texts lend literary weight to Joshua’s journey. For instance, one of his longer stays is at the Baylors’ pig farm, reminiscent of the swine in Homer’s Odyssey; Joshua also likens urban Pittsburgh to both Gomorrah and an “inferno, Dante’s hell made flesh.” Scriptural and folksy vocabulary mix in interesting ways: “He felt the beam in his own eye as he cast about for the codger’s mote” and “How low the English had brought him, a fisher of garbage.” The novel carefully balances its storylines, with various chapters recording Miriam’s daily life as she tends Abraham’s severe burns, while descriptions of hearty meals, lambing, and milking chores add authentic period detail. It can be difficult to believe that entire years are passing, a fact Moore has to emphasize by frequently inserting the children’s ages. Still, the novel eschews moralizing clichés to tell a powerful story of exile and reintegration. Joshua—“part Lazarus, part prodigal”—proves to be a memorable, multifaceted protagonist.
An appealing Amish twist on a classic narrative.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-46999-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: NAL
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by E. B. Moore
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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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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