A talented author to watch as her narrative technique matures.
The Canadian-born Edugyan’s unrelenting debut finds life—first and second—somber and bleak.
Samuel Tyne is an émigré from Ghana (he prefers the old name, Gold Coast) whose midlife crisis is aggravated by a stifling civil service job in Calgary, under the thumb of two bureaucrats he aptly nicknames Dombey and Son. At home, the atmosphere is even more fraught. Samuel and his wife Maud display less mutual tolerance than their warring ancestral tribes. Their twin 12-year-old daughters, Yvette and Chloe (indistinguishable even to their parents), are bad-seed prodigies. A surprise inheritance from Samuel’s estranged uncle Jacob—a dilapidated farmhouse in the small Alberta town of Aster, once settled by African-Americans from Oklahoma—offers respite, but not for long. No sooner does Samuel reinvent himself as an electronics repair-shop owner and early computer hardware developer (it’s 1968) than the twins rev up the RPMs on their continuous destructive loop. The duo defies all civilizing influences, even the friendship of schoolmate Ama, whom their parents have brought to Aster for the summer. On the social front, neighbor Saul Porter, the last Oklahoman settler and a reputed warlock, is pushing Samuel’s boundaries in more than the real estate sense. Ray and Eudora Frank, the Tynes’ first allies in Aster, have divided loyalties and ulterior motives. Although Edugyan’s spare prose, visceral images, and unfussy dialogue create a suitably ominous atmosphere, the plot advances haltingly and predictably. The family turmoil at the core of the story is more often summarized than shown, and the twins’ berserk behavior is too robotic to impart true horror to their intended role as engineers of the fall of the house of Tyne. Ama takes on an importance unjustified by her wan presence because the novel needs an Ishmael, and she’s it. The close, however, stark in its avoidance of redemptive bromides, is astonishingly moving.
A talented author to watch as her narrative technique matures.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-073603-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun beach read for urban sophisticates or those who think they are.
From Semple (This One Is Mine, 2008), a cleverly constructed Internet-age domestic comedy about a wife/mother/genius architect who goes a little nuts from living in that cesspool of perfection and bad weather called Seattle.
Bernadette left Los Angeles years earlier after a professional disaster: After she won a MacArthur grant for building a house using only materials that originated within 20 miles of the site, vengeful neighbors had the house destroyed. Now she lives in Seattle with her equally genius husband, Elgie, who is working on a big project in artificial intelligence at Microsoft, and their genius eighth-grade daughter, Bee, whose devotion to her mother is one of the novel’s least credible plot points. Bernadette may be brilliant and funny, but she is also mean-spirited and self-absorbed, with a definite case of entitlement that the author too frequently seems to share. She certainly hates everything about Seattle, especially the other mothers at Bee’s crunchy-granola private school. Because she hates to leave her house, a crumbling ruin she’s never bothered to renovate, she has hired a personal assistant in India to run her life via the Internet. After her vendetta against one of her Seattle mommy-enemies goes terribly awry, Elgie begins to wonder if she is having a mental breakdown. Meanwhile, Bernadette decides she wants to get out of a planned family trip to Antarctica. Days before the trip, in the middle of an intervention Elgie has plotted with his adoring administrative assistant, Bernadette disappears. To makes sense of the disappearance, Bee creates a book by collating the Internet postings, public records and private emails she has received from an anonymous source. Although there are wonderful scenes of deadpan absurdity—Semple wrote for Arrested Development—Seattle, already the butt of so much humor lately, seems an awfully easy mark. The tone is sharply witty if slightly condescending, but ultimately Semple goes for the heartstrings.
A fun beach read for urban sophisticates or those who think they are.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-25619-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Print the bumper sticker—"I'd Rather Be Living in an Elin Hilderbrand Novel."
Back to St. John with the Steele family, whose tragic loss and horrifying discovery have yielded an exciting new life.
In Winter in Paradise (2018), Hilderbrand introduced Midwestern magazine editor Irene Steele and her adult sons, Baker and Cash, then swept them off to the island of St. John after paterfamilias Russell Steele was killed in a helicopter crash with his secret mistress, leaving a preteen love child and a spectacular villa. While the first volume left a lot up in the air about Russell’s dubious business dealings and the manner of his death, this installment fills in many of the blanks. All three Steeles made new friends during their unexpected visit to the island in January, and now that’s resulted in job offers for Irene and Cash and the promise of new love for single dad Baker. Why not move to St. John and into the empty villa? Mother, sons, and grandson do just that. Both the dead mistress’s diary and a cadre of FBI agents begin to provide answers to the questions left dangling in Volume 1, and romantic prospects unfold for all three Steeles. Nevertheless, as a wise person once said, shit happens, combusting the family’s prospects and leading to a cliffhanger ending. On the way, there will be luscious island atmosphere, cute sundresses, frozen drinks, “slender baguette sandwiches with duck, arugula and fig jam,” lemongrass sugar cookies, and numerous bottles of both Krug and Dom Pérignon, the latter served by a wiseass who offers one of his trademark tasting notes: “This storied bubbly has notes of Canadian pennies, your dad’s Members Only jacket, and…‘We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together.’ ” You'll be counting the days until you can return to the Virgin Islands with these characters in the concluding volume of the trilogy.
Print the bumper sticker—"I'd Rather Be Living in an Elin Hilderbrand Novel."Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-43557-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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