A sudden string of calamities prompts a righteous woman to question her faith in Hartley’s debut novel.
Jemimah Barraclough—named after the daughter of the biblically afflicted Job—leads a charmed life. Cozily married to railroad technician Bob with four lovable kids, Jemimah counts among her blessings a fine house in the glowing English village of Moorthwaite and a comfortable nest-egg from a lucky lottery ticket. She deserves it, too; she’s a leader in her church, generous to charities and always ready to console a troubled neighbor. But Sophie, a cynical town gossip with horn-shaped wisps of cigarette smoke crowning her head, thinks Jemimah’s holiness would crumble along with her happiness if she were to suffer misfortune. And Jemimah will suffer—but not for a good long while. The first half of Hartley’s sprawling novel is a slow-paced, naturalistic depiction of the Barracloughs’ bliss with hardly a cloud on the horizon. There are well-observed scenes of genial domestic chaos, comically bickering kids and family outings in the countryside, with the exasperated, slightly uptight Jemimah always striving to enforce rules of morality and deportment. A roomy subplot about one of Bob’s construction projects immerses readers in railroad office politics, endless jocular banter among electricians and the technicalities of rewiring signal stations. This is engaging enough material, especially if you like trains, and Harley stocks it with vivid, sympathetic characters but the reader sometimes wonders where the narrative is heading. Then, an avalanche of disasters sweeps down. Hartley explores Jemimah’s anguish with sensitivity as she struggles to keep a stiff upper lip, pull her family together amid shocking traumas and reach out to others as tragedy closes in. As in the Old Testament, God’s response to rattled prayers is not entirely satisfying and entails a string of contrivances that strain credulity. Still, as characters wrestle with trials great and small, Hartley’s delicate, perceptive rendering of their sorrow and confusion makes for an absorbing read. A moving, if meandering, fable of good people who weather bad things.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1467884709
Page Count: 508
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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