Backward, ever backward, through sentences which sinuously, sonorously curl around parenthetical phrases and elliptical clauses, "vagariously" winds this retrospective of the life of Henry Dodd Worthington as now through "experience's actual disorder and inconsecutiveness" he tries to reconcile himself as he was (sufficiently remote to elicit a third person referral) with the man he now is in late middle age. . . . This doubtful construction is only intended as a warning to readers of Mr. Cozzens' new book which is his first novel in ten years and in which he has completed his mastery of the involute sentence. (Ibid.: "Heart conturbed, with dissolution's icy wind on him he does not, he cannot, elect to look ahead and, trembling, prefigure in the final gloom of night the river's calamitous sliding without intermission over the rock edge and wreathed with spray and vapor thundering down.") For those not by patience possessed, trying. . . . En avant—with Cozzens' Last Puritan as he assembles the parts of his life which, with a certain amount of grave questioning and judicious qualifying, have been important in this spectator-participant's total experience: his birth from a long line of acknowledged academic eminence and material affluence; his grandfather, seer and sage, who lived until 99 and repudiated Freud; his first seduction—an "unnerved unable blushing boy" at the hands of-an older woman; his marriage and divorce; his impatience with the marital capriciousness of his' daughter; his own ingenuous stance as a young man who found the workaday world of money unrelated to real life and its later reversal as via a Mind Power course he achieved a Madison Avenue empire, etc. etc. This reflective reconnaissance of "the kinds of unknowing in individual human experience" if parsed and pursued to its conclusion some six lines later, is intended to have "meaning for every man." Perhaps for Mr. Cozzens' admirers, although in Henry Dodd Worthington he seems to have removed himself to a considerable degree from his time and ours.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1968
ISBN: 0151621608
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1968
A bold but flawed debut novel.
There’s a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).
The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. “Where but in medicine,” he asks, “might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?” The question is key, revealing Verghese’s intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys’ Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it’s no surprise he’ll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.
A bold but flawed debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-41449-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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