Urquhart's third novel (after Changing Heaven, not reviewed) is an engrossing multigenerational tale shot through with passages of poetic intensity and beauty. On Raithlin, a small island off the northern Irish coast, in the mid-19th century, a young woman named Mary is changed forever by a romantic, tragic encounter. A sailor, victim of a distant shipwreck, is washed ashore and dies in her arms. The islanders believe that the youth is Mary's demon lover who has sent her away to the spirit realm, leaving only her physical replica. In fact, Mary moves about in a heightened state of dreamy creativity, consumed by shimmering visions of the sailor, the sea, and far-off lands she has never seen. She finally agrees to marry Brian, master of a local school, who loves her for her otherworldliness as much as for her russet-haired beauty. With Brian, Mary finds a measure of contentment, especially after the birth of their son, Liam. In 1846, however, the potato crops fail and the family is faced with starvation. With a gift from their British landlords, they emigrate to Canada on one of the notorious ``coffin ships.'' They survive the wracking journey and settle on scruffy farmland in the Canadian north woods. In the deep forest, the pull of the other world begins to reassert itself, and one day Mary disappears, leaving behind seven-year-old Liam and an infant daughter, Eileen. Several years later, an Algonquin named Exodus Crow appears, bearing Mary's corpse and explaining the abandonment of her family. Once grown, Liam and Eileen move south to settle on the shores of Lake Erie, where Liam realizes his dream of nurturing the land on a flourishing and fertile farm. In an echo of her mother's doomed romance, Eileen falls passionately in love with a fiery Irish patriot. The devastating consequences include a political assassination and the birth of their love child, who must be raised by Liam and his wife. In chronicling one family, Away celebrates the talismanic power of memory and the possibilities inherent in the lyricism and magic that exist just beyond the edges of reality. A novel that is both literary and accessible.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-85504-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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