A middling seafaring adventure in need of characters with more depth to make this intriguing history connect with readers.
Leaving behind a life as a printer in his father’s Amsterdam print shop, a young man embarks on a journey around the Atlantic Ocean in the early 17th century.
After accidentally starting a fire while saving a young woman from two would-be rapists, Jansen Visscher disobeys his father’s wishes and runs away, boarding The Black Tulip, a privateer ship under the direction of the Dutch West India Company. Combining Jansen and other fictional characters with real-life historical figures such as Adm. Piet Heyn, the novel provides a thoroughgoing portrait of a life at sea. The Black Tulip’s mission is to capture the Spanish treasure fleet, and no shortage of naval skirmishes accompanies them on this mission. Jansen shows himself to be educated and quarrelsome, frequently questioning Piet’s orders and acting as a sort of moral compass: challenging the institution of slavery or pushing for less severe punishment of his shipmates. Amid the nautical events, Yoder (Margaret’s Print Shop, 2005) finds the most success in charting Jansen’s questioning of his decision to leave his father; he visits the print shops on islands where his fleet stops, engages in philosophical discussion, and comes to value the knowledge his father and others in the trade represent. To be sure, Yoder errs on the historical side of historical fiction. While the research behind the novel is beyond reproach, Yoder is less adept at providing an engaging narrative encapsulated by that history. Too often the story confuses information with emotional depth—the reader knows an awful lot about these characters, but feeling their motivations is less likely. Often, clichéd passages—“He had earned his sea legs,” Yoder says of Jansen early in the book, “but the ground under his feet gave him a sense of reassurance”—stand in for what might be more engaging writing, telling readers what’s going on without inviting them to feel it alongside the characters.
A middling seafaring adventure in need of characters with more depth to make this intriguing history connect with readers.Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990555902
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Plowshares Publications
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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