A bit heavy on political rhetoric, but passionate female characters deliver a valuable message.
The summer of 1901 in Denver sees the reunion of three sisters in this historical novel that hails the burgeoning independence of women.
It has been 11 years since Dr. Elizabeth “Lida” Clayton has seen her sisters, Mildred and Evangeline. When Lida married William after her graduation from Smith College, her mother was furious. William was a Northerner and his family manufactured guns used by the Union Army. During childhood, Lida was close to Mildred, who is three years older. But Mildred sided with their mother, creating a family schism. An unfortunate visit to the clan in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1890 resulted in a final blowout. Still, Lida, now a widow, remains in contact with her kid sister, Eva, who, at 25, is 15 years younger. Unexpectedly, Mildred and Eva accept an invitation to visit Lida and her two children, 15-year-old Sara Jane and 5-year-old Cole, in Denver, a hotbed of liberal thinking. Lida hopes this will lead to a reconciliation. But Mildred agreed to the trip as a ploy to help break up the developing romance between Eva and the man she is determined to marry, Bertram Dearman. Russell’s (All About Thailand, 2016, etc.) gentle narrative plays out over two months and, in alternating chapters, is narrated by the individual voices of Lida, Sara Jane, and Mildred (whom readers hear through her letters home and her journal entries). The literary device works well, giving full dimension to all three characters. This is part love story (romantic and familial) and part examination of the early days of women entering the professional arena, with a hefty measure of political discourse thrown into the mix. But the most intriguing underlying plotline tracks Mildred’s halting transformation from grim, frumpy temperance advocate to a lively participant in Lida’s progressive circle of accomplished women. Sara Jane provides much of the humor; her enthusiasm, innocence, and teenage angst are rather charming. And the author’s descriptions of a booming Denver at the turn of the 20th century re-create the excitement of a city moving into the future.
A bit heavy on political rhetoric, but passionate female characters deliver a valuable message.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73249-940-9
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Belles Histoires
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb romp.
Hollywood operators and creative washouts collide across five decades and two continents in a brilliant, madcap meditation on fate.
The sixth novel by Walter (The Financial Lives of the Poets, 2009, etc.) opens in April 1962 with the arrival of starlet Dee Moray in a flyspeck Italian resort town. Dee is supposed to be filming the Liz Taylor-Richard Burton costume epic Cleopatra, but her inconvenient pregnancy (by Burton) has prompted the studio to tuck her away. A smitten young man, Pasquale, runs the small hotel where she’s hidden, and he’s contemptuous of the studio lackey, Michael Deane, charged with keeping Dee out of sight. From there the story sprays out in multiple directions, shifting time and perspective to follow Deane’s evolution into a Robert Evans-style mogul; Dee’s hapless aging-punk son; an alcoholic World War II vet who settles into Pasquale’s hotel to peck away at a novel; and a young screenwriter eagerly pitching a dour movie about the Donner Party. Much of the pleasure of the novel comes from watching Walter ingeniously zip back and forth to connect these loose strands, but it largely succeeds on the comic energy of its prose and the liveliness of its characters. A theme that bubbles under the story is the variety of ways real life energizes great art—Walter intersperses excerpts from his characters’ plays, memoirs, film treatments and novels to show how their pasts inform their best work. Unlikely coincidences abound, but they feel less like plot contrivances than ways to serve a broader theme about how the unlikely, unplanned moments in our lives are the most meaningful ones. And simply put, Walter’s prose is a joy—funny, brash, witty and rich with ironic twists. He’s taken all of the tricks of the postmodern novel and scoured out the cynicism, making for a novel that's life-affirming but never saccharine.
A superb romp.Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-192812-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK TO SCREEN
A stunning supernatural Southern gothic.
The remote Arkansas bayou is a swirling kaleidoscope of murder, greed, and dark, ancient magic in Bram Stoker Award finalist Davidson’s second novel (In the Valley of the Sun, 2017).
The rotting Holy Day Church and Sabbath House, where the preacher Billy Cotton held his congregants in his thrall, serves as a painful reminder to 21-year-old Miranda Crabtree of the night 10 years ago when she and her father, Hiram, the boatman, took the midwife (and witch) Iskra there to deliver Cotton's son. As soon as Cotton laid eyes on the infant’s mottled, scaly skin and webbed hands, he called him an abomination and tried to kill him. Iskra had other ideas, and the baby, whom Miranda called Littlefish, survived. But Hiram disappeared that night, and she’s since dreamed of finding his body (because he’s surely dead) and laying him to rest. It's Miranda’s love for the mute, goodhearted Littlefish that has kept her going, and with Iskra's help, she's spent years running her father's general store and eventually running dope for Cotton and his cruel and corrupt deputy, Charlie Riddle, to make ends meet. Now, Billy Cotton’s kingdom has crumbled around him and his body is riddled with cancer. Before dying, he’s desperate to appease the angry ghost of his wife, who died in childbirth, but he’ll need a sacrifice. On Miranda’s last run for Riddle, she’s ordered to deliver a young girl to Cotton, which she’s not about to do even though she knows her refusal will start a war she might not survive. But she’s ready, and the time for a reckoning has come. Davidson’s captivating horror fable combines the visceral violence of Cormac McCarthy with his own wholly original craftsmanship, weaving rich, folkloric magic with the best elements of a gritty Southern thriller. The book's lightning-fast pace doesn’t come at the expense of fully realized, flawed, and achingly human characters. Ample bloodshed is offset by beautiful prose, and the bad guys are really, really bad. Luckily, Miranda, a young woman forged in hardship and grief and buoyed by her love of a very special child, is a perfect foil for the evil she’ll have to face.
A stunning supernatural Southern gothic.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-53855-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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