Lyrical and cruel, this tale about Scottish witches, midsummer nights, and a magical island also becomes a Shakespearean...
In this fantasy historical novel, an apprentice wise woman in 16th-century Scotland learns her craft, experiences visions, and influences a London playwright.
Barring a brief framing narrative set in present-day Canada, this tale follows the fortunes of Wise Women in Mull, an island off the coast of Scotland, in the late 16th century. Gormal of Moy, an ancient wise woman, has a good relationship with John Mor, local chief. But his heir, Hector, remains suspicious and resentful, especially when young apprentice Anna predicts Hector’s daughter Ishbel “will have more power than you will ever know.” Ishbel eventually comes to Gormal for protection and teaching. After Gormal’s death, Anna becomes the new Doidag, gaining Ishbel and others as apprentices. They work magic to help their clan, such as warding off an attack from a Spanish galleon; regaining a changeling child; and fulfilling Gormal’s prophecy that Anna will draw a man of rare gifts from far away so that Ishbel can open his imagination “to the numinous beyond common thought.” This man (though nicknamed Hal, he’s obviously Shakespeare) agrees with a drunken, faery-influenced suggestion to practice a magic rite that involves torturing pet cats stolen from nearby farms. He’s assured he’ll win fame and fortune, but Ishbel still must bring him insight; she also encounters new dangers when Hector ascends the throne. The novel ends with several fates settled. Prentice (Meera’s Second Life, 2014, etc.) employs a lyrical, often rhapsodic style in creating her atmosphere, as when Gormal sits little Anna on a pony for a steep ride: “This casual act of understanding changed more than any spell of enchantment. It made the world new.” The witches’ focus on “connections” and “connectedness” is perhaps overly modern, but Prentice provides many intriguing examples of how wise women learn, gain visions, and practice magic. The Shakespeare story is something of an uneasy fit, partly because of the rite’s cruelty (it’s hard to wish Hal well after that) and partly because it detracts from wisdom and vision as woman-centered, otherwise such a strong theme in the plot.
Lyrical and cruel, this tale about Scottish witches, midsummer nights, and a magical island also becomes a Shakespearean origin story.Pub Date: July 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4421-2561-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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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