Irish-born novelist Delaney (Ireland, 2005, etc.) spins another charming mix of cotton-candy romance and history.
When we last left Ben MacCarthy, world war, social upheaval and sometimes-requited love were thick in the air. Now, at the start of Delaney’s latest, we find him across the pond, facing “a frigid Saturday in late 1956, in my struggling, depressed native land.” He has a job well suited to his curious and artful mind, gathering stories from old-timers, notable among them a yarn maestro who “had, naturally, pored over the monkish volumes, but he had also heard many of his stories in the old ancestral way, in his own home.” Ahem: a man who collects blarney may just commit some on his own, and McCarthy, whom we suspect of being a stand-in for Delaney himself, is a gifted practitioner of the trade. He’s not quite prepared, though, for the return of his beloved Venetia, star of stage and—well, stage—who, having split the blanket in the previous volume in Delaney’s saga, Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show (2010), breezes merrily back into his life. Or, better, the life of poor battered Ireland, for it’s one of Ben’s pals who has the task of telling him that she’s turned up nearly a quarter-century later: “She’s touring the country. But I’m sure you know it. And you’re avoiding it.” Just to rub it in, the friend adds that she’s just as beautiful as ever, and lonely. Well, gents, start your storytelling engines: Ben roams up and down the old sod seeking both stories and solace, affording Delaney plenty of opportunities for his hallmark tricks of the trade, from Quiet Man–style fisticuffs to goofy asides (“If Greece may be considered the birthplace of the rhetorical question, call Ireland the country that robbed it of all meaning”) and fourth-wall demolition (“The youngster who found the bodies, as I expect you’ve guessed, had come from the local hall”). The story line isn’t exactly Ulysses, but Delaney makes the most of it to craft a light and pleasing entertainment.
Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6785-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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