An outstanding debut that succeeds in gathering domestic drama, philosophical fiction, and a touch of Southern Gothic style...
Two generations of Kentucky women navigate familial obligation and legacy in Hanratty’s debut novel in stories.
In 1936, Salinda “Sal” Skinner, scarred by the public shame of her drunk father and a “trash” family name, vows to leave Gray Hampton, Kentucky’s small-town prejudice far behind. And so begins a generational tale of women searching to find meaning in their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. Sal sees her salvation in local rich boy Ivan Barkley, but their “oil and water” marriage ends with an accident at work, which leaves Sal a widow and forces a return to her despised hometown. Sal’s daughters go on to struggle with their own identities. After an interlude with hints of Southern Gothic, youngest Heddy becomes the voice of the second half of the book, narrating her formative years with a narcoleptic handyman stepfather, through marriage and motherhood, until a freak tragedy threatens to destroy her family. A grief-stricken Heddy secludes herself in a woodland cabin, where she attempts to come to terms with personal wounds both old and new and find a kind of philosophical peace among the “community of trees.” Such themes suggest a sprawling tome, but although the novel covers decades of family life, Hanratty displays the short story writer’s keen eye for concision and elision, allowing years to pass in a blink without leaving readers adrift. A fine sense of place helps, as do the well-observed details of family life, with its in-jokes and secret language. The characters feel lived-in and authentic, although Heddy’s voice is marred later on by an unnecessary switch in point of view (from close third- to first-person), and Penny’s voice is conspicuously absent from the narrative, which can sometimes give readers the feeling that the stories are merely an excerpt of a much larger work. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise assured and beautifully crafted novel that packs more into one short book than most writers do in an entire series.
An outstanding debut that succeeds in gathering domestic drama, philosophical fiction, and a touch of Southern Gothic style into one family saga.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9960120-1-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Fleur-de-Lis Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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