A time-hopping tale that should appeal to readers with an interest in the prehistoric period.
This debut omnibus unites all three installments of a story that connects a pregnant woman in the late Pleistocene era with her modern-day descendant, a researcher who gets entangled in a terrorist plot.
Raven is an early human woman who is forced to join her sister’s clan after her mate dies. Her sister’s husband and clan leader, Bear, treats Raven with disdain when he is not sharing her bed. When they encounter an injured Neanderthal man—scornfully referred to as a “Longhead” by the clan—Raven uses her skills as a healer to nurse him back to health. Upon realizing she is pregnant, and that the likely father is the Longhead, not Bear, Raven flees the clan to find and hopefully join the Longheads, all the while wondering what the offspring of these two distantly related but still very different groups of people will be like: “Those heavy brows and the heavily muscled build made an unattractive combination when she struggled to imagine a female infant.” In the present day, Mark Hayek, a Parkinson’s disease researcher in whose veins runs the blood of Neanderthals thanks to a union between them and the early humans, must travel to the Levant to sort out a family inheritance. But he soon realizes that his cousin Antun may be under the sway of a terrorist group known as the Lions of the Levant and may be manipulating Mark for selfish gains. Swan is clearly heavily influenced by Jean Auel, although her writing is less explicit than that of The Clan of the Cave Bear author. Raven’s story vastly outshines that of the hapless Mark, who frequently comes off as astonishingly and annoyingly naïve. The differences between early humans and the Neanderthal Longheads should fascinate readers (At one point, Raven observes: “Stories she heard about the Longheads hadn’t prepared her to expect that the forms below would look so much like actual men. Their bodies were broader, and something was off about their arms and legs”). And the prehistoric world, filled with bison, hyenas, wolves, and two-legged predators, is portrayed in all of its harsh, hostile glory.
A time-hopping tale that should appeal to readers with an interest in the prehistoric period.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5407-8994-5
Page Count: 412
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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