First-novelist Innes-Brown is a fine writer, and fully succeeds in realizing her characters lives, yet her prose is...
Inness-Brown (stories: Here, 1994, etc.) offers a closely drawn, richly imagined study of two characters—a young man and the elderly woman who raised him—on a remote island in New England.
The story opens as 35-year-old James Jack emerges from his winter cabin to discover the body of his 94-year-old “Tante”—Marguerite—dead in the snow nearby. From here, Inness-Brown slowly, intimately coaxes along the tale of their unlikely relationship. Marguerite, born and raised in a strict household, had fallen in love early with a fieldhand, Daniel, and with him conceived a child that was later aborted. Daniel is murdered by her father, and Marguerite marries again. Intentionally sterilized during the abortion, Marguerite grew into possession of her talents as an artist with Judith, an elderly divorcée with an eye for wildflowers. Her paintings of local flora are a hit, and for some time she lives happily with Judith—until their house burns down and Marguerite’s work is destroyed along with it. Having relocated to Grain Island, in New England, Marguerite is visited one day by James Jack’s young mother, carrying her infant son. He’s in need of daycare, she tells the by-then 59-year-old Tante Marguerite. Tante immediately takes to baby James, and after his parents are killed in an accident, formally adopts him—but not without a struggle from both his family, and other parents seeking to adopt. James and Tante each are given sections to narrate their stories, sometimes overlapping, and each with great and patient detail.
First-novelist Innes-Brown is a fine writer, and fully succeeds in realizing her characters lives, yet her prose is sometimes emotionally desultory: a thick languor acts as a shell in which the intensities of her scenes and moments are glimpsed but not felt.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41196-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.
A heartland novel that evokes the possibility of everyday miracles.
The third novel by Wisconsin author Butler (Beneath the Bonfire, 2015, etc.) shows that he knows this terrain inside out, in terms of tone and theme as well as geography. Nothing much happens in this small town in western Wisconsin, not far from the river that serves as the border with Minnesota, which attracts some tourism in the summer but otherwise seems to exist outside of time. The seasons change, but any other changes are probably for the worse—local businesses can’t survive the competition of big-box stores, local kids move elsewhere when they grow up, local churches see their congregations dwindle. Sixty-five-year-old Lyle Hovde and his wife, Peg, have lived here all their lives; they were married in the same church where he was baptized and where he’s sure his funeral will be. His friends have been friends since boyhood; he had the same job at an appliance store where he fixed what they sold until the store closed. Then he retired, or semiretired, as he found a new routine as the only employee at an apple orchard, where the aging owners are less concerned with making money than with being good stewards of the Earth. The novel is like a favorite flannel shirt, relaxed and comfortable, well-crafted even as it deals with issues of life and death, faith and doubt that Lyle somehow takes in stride. He and Peg lost their only child when he was just a few months old, a tragedy which shook his faith even as he maintained his rituals. He and Peg subsequently adopted a baby daughter, Shiloh, through what might seem in retrospect like a miracle (it certainly didn’t seem to involve any of the complications and paperwork that adoptions typically involve). Shiloh was a rebellious child who left as soon as she could and has now returned home with her 5-year-old son, Isaac. Grandparenting gives Lyle another chance to experience what he missed with his own son, yet drama ensues when Shiloh falls for a charismatic evangelist who might be a cult leader (and he’s a stranger to these parts, so he can’t be much good). Though the plot builds toward a dramatic climax, it ends with more of a quiet epiphany.
The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-246971-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
IN THE NEWS
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.
The husband-and-wife team who have given us refreshing English versions of Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Chekhov now present their lucid translation of Tolstoy's panoramic tale of adultery and society: a masterwork that may well be the greatest realistic novel ever written. It's a beautifully structured fiction, which contrasts the aristocratic world of two prominent families with the ideal utopian one dreamed by earnest Konstantin Levin (a virtual self-portrait). The characters of the enchanting Anna (a descendant of Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Fontane's Effi Briest, and forerunner of countless later literary heroines), the lover (Vronsky) who proves worthy of her indiscretion, her bloodless husband Karenin and ingenuous epicurean brother Stiva, among many others, are quite literally unforgettable. Perhaps the greatest virtue of this splendid translation is the skill with which it distinguishes the accents of Anna's romantic egoism from the spare narrative clarity with which a vast spectrum of Russian life is vividly portrayed.
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89478-8
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
