Readers who are not devoted followers of Karon may be impatient with the glacial pace of this installment.
Book two of Karon’s new series about an Episcopal priest, The Father Tim Novels (Home to Holly Springs, 2007), continues as Father Tim’s long-awaited Ireland vacation turns into a busman’s holiday.
Father Tim Kavanagh, 70, and his wife, children’s author Cynthia, 64, have arrived at Broughadoon fishing lodge for a second honeymoon. A repeat visitor to the lodge, Tim re-encounters the proprietors, Anna Conor, her husband Liam and Anna’s daughter Bella, now a truculent teenager. Anna’s aging father William is the resident eminence grise. Until William bought it, Broughadoon was once part of the estate of Evelyn Conor, chatelaine of the adjacent manor house, Catharmore. The once lovely Evelyn, Liam’s formidable mother, is now an elderly alcoholic still furious with William for welshing on his youthful promise of marriage. (Instead, she married wealthy Riley Conor.) As if to prove there’s no vacation from Tim’s vocation, spiritually unsettling stuff happens. An intruder leaps out of a wardrobe, startling Cynthia, who stumbles, respraining her recently healed ankle. A priceless painting disappears from Broughadoon’s parlor. His Catholic hosts seek Tim out as an informal confessor. Anna is worried that William may actually be Liam’s father. Liam frets about the same possibility. William still regrets abandoning Evelyn. Meanwhile over at Catharmore, Evelyn has decided to detox and give her geriatric liver a fighting chance, only to suffer injuries in a fall. Tim accompanies Evelyn to the hospital (the Catholic priest being off on his own holiday) because her older son Paddy has retreated into his own boozy haze. Father Tim sees in Bella the same type of implacability that led him to take on his troubled adopted son Dooley. Can he foster similar paternal determination in Liam? Tim and Cynthia peruse a journal, circa 1861, written by Catharmore’s first owner. The long journal entries do little to advance the present story but are sometimes a welcome diversion from it.
Readers who are not devoted followers of Karon may be impatient with the glacial pace of this installment.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02212-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
