An engrossing and philosophically challenging meditation on what it means to be a living being worthy of moral respect.
A predatory leopard plagues a woman’s cattle farm in Africa as she struggles to devise a response with the help of a scientifically minded gorilla.
In this novel, Jane Porter lives on a cattle farm in Kenya with her husband, John Greystoke, an Englishman of notable descent. They suffer regular attacks by a leopard they call Sheeta, and as the losses mount, they try to devise a plan to thwart him. But Sheeta turns out to be a cunning hunter and only grows bolder over time, even taunting their futile efforts to capture him. Meanwhile, the couple meet Chulk, a 400-pound gorilla endowed with astonishingly precocious intelligence, capable of speech and rational inference. As a result of Chulk’s preoccupation with abstract, intellectual concerns, he’s “rebuffed by his clan.” Under Jane’s patient tutelage, Chulk becomes extraordinarily well-versed in the intricacies of scientific investigation and helps Jane brainstorm a way to defend her family’s land against Sheeta’s costly assaults. After John dies trying to stop Sheeta, Jane is left in charge of the farm, though she finds herself at loggerheads with her son, Jack, who has old-fashioned ideas about gender roles and pretensions about the “Greystoke destiny.” Chulk, a “magnificent scientific discovery,” deepens his reflections to include not just science, but also the whole of life, displaying the “avid curiosity of a social anthropologist.” His ruminations extend to philosophical and theological matters as well, and he engages in profound exchanges with Jane, a devout Quaker, about the nature of the universe, conversations intelligently depicted by Barnes (The Beauty Queen of Bonthe and Other Stories of West Africa, 2018, etc.). The plot is a remarkably inventive one, and the author raises provocative questions about the relationships between different species—John at one point is deeply attracted to a female gorilla. In addition, Barnes sensitively tackles the issue of the societal constraints placed on Jane both as a woman and a senior citizen—she is forced to squarely confront what she calls the “handicaps of my age and (particularly) my gender.” This is a peculiar but captivating tale that readers will not soon forget.
An engrossing and philosophically challenging meditation on what it means to be a living being worthy of moral respect.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974301-86-7
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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