Superlative historical adventure, narrated with plenty of action and a good feel for the era.
The sequel to Over the Wine-Dark Sea (2001) follows the fearless cousins Menedemos and Sostratos from their native Rhodes to Athens and back during one of Greece’s worst civil wars.
For those just tuning in, Menedemos and Sostratos are a somewhat Patty Duke–ish pair of cousins living shortly after the death of Alexander the Great: Menedemos is a sailor (ambitious, handsome, bold, impatient), while Sostratos is a scholar (cunning, cool-headed, ascetic, calculating). They make a good pair, each complementing the other’s weaknesses and strengths, and they’re both bankrolled by their wealthy fathers (the merchant brothers Philodemos and Lysistratos), who see the need to look beyond the shores of Rhodes to keep the family fortunes in good shape. The last time out, Menedemos and Sostratos ventured to a then-obscure Rome and returned with untold booty. This time they’re off to Athens—hardly uncharted territory in third-century b.c., but a dangerous trip all the same, since just now the Aegean is infested with pirates and the whole of Greece is being rocked by a bloody war between the fleets of Antigonos and Ptolemaios. The cousins need to raise money for their family, since trade is badly in a slump now that war has broken out, and they set off to sell a cache of Egyptian emeralds, along with their rarest treasure of all: a skull that Sostratos believes to be that of a gryphon (the mythological beast part lion, part bird). There are the usual adventures on the high seas (pirates, storms) and a good deal of action on shore (women, politics). But with the help of their faithful skipper Diokles, Menedemos, and Sostratos manage, like Odysseus, to make it home in one piece.
Superlative historical adventure, narrated with plenty of action and a good feel for the era.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-87222-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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