An ambitious but ultimately underwhelming story of immigration and labor.
In Fraser’s debut historical novel, a Scottish couple weathers the challenges of immigration to America.
In 1895 Scotland, William Fraser leaves his native Highlands for Dundee looking for work—even though conventional wisdom says that “you go to Dundee to find a woman, not a job.” This proves to be correct on both counts: William arrives to find the town shut down due to a strike by the women who work at the jute-fiber factories; he finally finds work loading wagons, and through a co-worker, he meets Mary Coyle, one of the jute spinners. The two quickly fall in love, although the pairing is not without controversy; Mary’s Irish Catholic father doesn’t condone her marriage to the Protestant William. William’s pending departure for the United States presents an even greater obstacle: His industrious father, Jack, has gone to work in the mines over there, and he wants William to join him. As William attempts to locate his dad in boomtowns across the American West, Mary lingers with her family in Dundee. Can their nascent love survive the time apart? It will depend on whether William can survive the mines’ deplorable conditions. Fraser’s prose quickly and effectively summons the dust and soot of the era without feeling stilted or antiquated, as in this passage, in which William makes his way through the streets of turn-of-the-century Seattle: “Walking felt good, though William had to dodge Commercial Street’s occupants: people were hawking wares, and men, both well dressed and ragged looking, and women with parasols were looking at storefront windows.” The author also succeeds in recreating the hardscrabble working conditions, both in Scotland and in the United States. However, there’s a feeling of inevitability to the plot that robs it of some of its liveliness. There’s plenty of movement, and it hums along nicely, but readers may find that the characters are generally too likable, and that their relationships feel too clean. Even so, fans of historical fiction will find much here to enjoy.
An ambitious but ultimately underwhelming story of immigration and labor.Pub Date: May 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-913384-6
Page Count: 366
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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