This is a long story, the whole history of Texas, from its very beginnings, as far back as 1540 when the Spanish nobleman Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led an expedition from Mexico to search the northern wilds for gold. And while much of the story is interesting, some of it is quite boring. Nevertheless, the story will go on. And on. Never before has Michener been so bold about using his muted blend of fiction/fact to instruct. We are presented from the outset with a (fictional) state Task Force, assigned to determine how best the complex, colorful weave of Texas history can be presented to its schoolchildren of today. As we meet the members of the Task Force, it quickly becomes apparent that each represents a Texas stereotype: e.g., the oilman, the rancher, the Southern lady, the Spanish descendant. And, indeed, as Michener repeatedly interrupts the musings of the Task Force to present fictionalized vignettes from different epochs of Texas history, we meet each member's ancestors as they stumble into, and flourish within, the confines of the Lone Star State's borders. For example, the 21 st-removed ancestor of Task Force member Efrain Garza accompanies the Spanish as a muleteer on that early expedition. Another Garza is at the side of the Mexican Generalissimo Santa Anna as he lays siege to the Alamo. We follow the sweep of Texas history through the years of early settlement, the founding of the Republic, the taming of the Wild West, the great Indian wars, the Civil War, the establishment of the cotton, cattle and oil industries. We live the beginnings of the Texas Rangers, even thrill to the revolutionary introduction of barbed wire to ranch life, and delight in the contemporary vagaries of the real-estate boom, that last frontier in which a man can still make his millions if he has the courage of his speculations. Such real-life heroes as Jim Bowie and Sam Houston are tossed into the mix with their fictional counterparts, and credibility is often strained with the run of coincidences (in a state as large as Texas, how is it that the ancestors of Task Force members manage to stumble over each other at every historical turn?). But the generational connections do serve to keep the story moving. While some will be offended by Michener's politics—he takes care to warn, for instance, that the surge of illegal immigration from Mexico could one day overcome the state—most will find he has reduced the sprawl of Texas history to a good read. Overall, Michener tames Texas, and if in doing so he flattens some of its flair, he presents its history as a comprehensive and readable whole.
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1985
ISBN: 0375761411
Page Count: 1120
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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