A creatively embellished, if uneven, tale of an Irish family’s odyssey.
This debut historical novel charts an Irish family’s passage to America during the Great Famine.
In 1848, the Bodkin family set sail from Galway, Ireland, to New York City on a ship named the Cushlamachree. Reflecting on his family history, the author remarks that his book “relates what I have imagined about the Bodkins’ lives between 1848 and 1902, sewn together with places, names, and dates I have found to be factual.” The story opens with Martin, age “sixty-plus-six,” recalling his family’s life in Briarhill, a Galway “townland,” prior to the clan’s immigration. The narrative then switches to Dominic, Martin’s brother, an esteemed doctor and first-class passenger on his return voyage to America in 1894. Bodkin then skips back to describe Martin, Dominic, and their siblings boarding the “coffin ship” with their parents to first set foot in the New World. The author focuses predominantly on Dominic and his medical career after he became an Army nurse during the Civil War and Martin, a veteran of the same campaign who finds works as an ironmonger in Brooklyn. The tale describes the family navigating trauma and prejudice to find a foothold in America. Bodkin delights in capturing the atmosphere of a location and establishing a strong sense of place. Describing summer in Brooklyn, he notes: “Boys played games in the streets without shirts; mothers sat in the shade, waving fans near their faces; businessmen walking to and from offices took off their jackets.” The author also introduces meticulously detailed characters, creating a rich backstory for each. The tale of Nora Jones, who as a child is found in a curragh alongside her dead father and travels to America with the Bodkins, is particularly stirring. But while substantial background information is offered for female characters, the emphasis remains on male achievement. The narrative would have benefited from stronger, more believable female voices. In addition, Bodkin’s dialogue is often too on the nose, communicating facts in a dry, unrealistic manner. At one point, a character asserts: “It was only my grandfather who left for Newfoundland in 1780. As a young man, he left his parents to sail from Dublin to Newfoundland.” This novel captures the author’s family history with clarity, but sadly its flaws prevent it from truly standing out from similar titles.
A creatively embellished, if uneven, tale of an Irish family’s odyssey.Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73637-872-4
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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