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Night Falling On The Tree Of Cups

A wondrous novel of trauma, individuality, and poetry.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2015

Margetson, in his debut novel, explores the fates of two interwoven families against the backdrop of Brazil’s 1964 coup d’état.

Two families, one rich and one poor, anchor this fictional look at the ways that society fractures along lines of class, race, fortune, and ambition in Río de Janeiro. There, life is as colorful as it is fleeting, and the heat is as oppressive as the police force. Nothing highlights the disparity quite like the column of army tanks that appears in the streets one morning in 1964, during the season of carnival. The lowly bartender Afonso, who serves as the reader’s guide, is a quixotic figure in the most literal sense, driven by some childhood malady (or defense mechanism) to see the world in his own poetic terms. He diminishes the threat of the tanks, for example, by determining them to be a pack of elephants. His young nephew has inherited the practice; the boy calls himself “the Wolfman” and wears a carnival mask that he believes renders him invisible. Such poetic actions transmogrify the violent life of the favelas (urban slums) into something manageable, even beautiful. Meanwhile, the Wolfman's grandmother Zoilma works for a wealthy family that includes teenage photographer Agnes, her blind mother, and her absent, politically active father. Most of the characters are emotionally scarred, and the sins of the previous generation may determine the fate of the current one. Margetson effectively imagines the sweat and samba of Río de Janeiro from half a century ago and, perhaps more impressively, sheds American notions of novelistic structure, pacing, and expectation. The book lingers and leaps with a Latin American rhythm and a heightened tolerance for horror that feels significantly more immersive than the majority of American fiction set in the Third World. The author’s prose keeps readers’ attention locked in the minutiae of his characters, even as events of greater objective importance unfold at the story’s margins: “She kept time, struck the match. Still keeping time with her foot she blew out the match and quickly put it in her mouth, removed it, then exhaled a single smoke ring.” The book is full of these rhythmic moments, which are somehow more vibrant and enduring than the background political events. The author captures not just the facts of a moment in history, but also the humanity at its center.

A wondrous novel of trauma, individuality, and poetry.

Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2014

ISBN: 978-1500962807

Page Count: 182

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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