A long, unwieldy novel that recapitulates a story told better by its original author, with a final third setting up a story...
A retelling of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 classic The Count of Monte Cristo that continues the story of Edmond Dantès.
The pseudonymous Holy Ghost Writer (The Count of Monte Cristo as Retold by Sherlock Holmes, 2013, etc.) offers 245 pages of new adventures for Dantès, aka the Count of Monte Cristo, narrated by Arthur Conan Doyle’s equally classic detective Sherlock Holmes (with a guest appearance by Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn). The new material, enough for a stand-alone novel by itself, is preceded by a 571-page recap of Dumas’ original novel, also narrated by Holmes. Given that the original is widely available in print and digital form, it’s hard to imagine why one would want to read a version that eliminates Dumas’ color and description. Holmes’ voice often sounds more like a 21st-century man’s (“Mercedes had no idea that [Fernand] was caught up in the thing with Edmond”) than Doyle’s meticulous, cerebral hero’s. The new material has Holmes befriending the much older Dantès and becoming embroiled in his life in the antebellum American South. Dantès is urged to go there by a mysterious, disembodied voice, which also advises him to buy a plantation and then free his slaves in order to show his neighbors that treating workers humanely gets better results than cruelty. The continuation also endows Dantès with not one, but two wives—Haydee and Mercedes from the original tale—and a passing liaison with a Bedouin girl, Raymee, produces twins. There’s also Black Beauty, an erstwhile slave whose son is widely assumed to be Dantès’; in fact, Holmes is his father. However, the plot never quite gets going, as the novel turns out to be merely a setup for a yet-to-be-published volume in which Dantès will prove to be the guiding force behind the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. The author also reveals that Dantès is the inventor of dry ice, Epsom salts and the greenhouse; the co-founder of Yale University’s legendary Skull and Bones Club; and a descendant of King Solomon, Jesus and the Merovingian kings. It effectively turns Dantès from a flawed hero who realizes too late the price of revenge to a two-dimensional uber-mensch.
A long, unwieldy novel that recapitulates a story told better by its original author, with a final third setting up a story that remains to be told.Pub Date: July 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490406848
Page Count: 816
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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