This fifth installment in Karon’s popular Mitford Saga (Out to Canaan, 1997, etc.) follows Father Tim Kavanagh and his wife, Cynthia, as they wander farther afield to Whitecap Island, North Carolina. Now retired from his longtime post as rector of the Episcopal parish of Mitford, Father Tim accepts a position as “interim minister” at a parish on a small coastal island just off the nearby Outer Banks. Karon is an old-fashioned writer’she even addresses her opening lines to a Gentle Reader—and much of her story revolves around the homely details of cooking, socializing, and keeping house that are familiar to any minister’s wife or daughter. But domestic crises arise as well, and Father Tim and Cynthia both have to find ways to help parishioners who suffer from loneliness, depression, and other (usually secret) griefs. Much of their concern is for Dooley Barlowe, a‘’mountain boy” Tim took into his home at Mitford five years before and raised almost as his own son, sending him to a Virginia prep school for education and guidance. Dooley, now in his teens, has stayed behind in Mitford but soon finds himself back in the kind of trouble from which Father Tim and Cynthia have worked hard to extract him. A story of small traumas and small victories, Karon’s account manages to avoid the worst excesses of sentimentality and to provide a rather charming portrait of life in the slow lane. (Literary Guild selection; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-87810-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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