Like her grandmother, Walls knows how to tell a story with love and grit.
After a fascinating memoir about her vagabond parents (The Glass Castle, 2005), Walls turns her sights on her maternal grandmother Lily Casey Smith, who died when Walls was eight.
Because she uses a first-person narrative voice to capture Lily’s scrappy voice and imaginatively fills in some of the missing details of Lily’s life, Walls calls the work “A True-Life Novel,” but it follows the straightforward linear path of biography. Lily’s father, whose speech impediment belies his native intelligence, is an eccentric who once spent three years in prison for murder, idolizes Billy the Kid and believes child’s play is a waste of time. Lily’s childhood on ranches in west Texas and New Mexico is an idyll filled with chores like breaking horses. She wins academic honors at the Catholic boarding school she attends until her father spends her tuition money to buy some dogs. A scrapper, Lily overcomes every setback. Although she has no high-school degree, during World War I’s teacher shortage she temporarily lands the teaching jobs she loves. When the jobs evaporate, she moves to Chicago, where she marries a salesman who turns out to be a thieving bigamist, “a crumb bum” as Lily calls him. At 27, she starts college in Arizona where she meets and marries Jim Smith, whose no-nonsense smarts match Lily’s. When money gets scarce, Lily, now a teacher and mother of two, supplements the family income by selling bootleg liquor. Jim lands a job managing a 100,000-acre cattle ranch and builds a dam that allows the ranch to survive a terrible drought. When the ranch is sold, the Smiths move to Phoenix, where they live in unaccustomed comfort. But city life does not suit them and they head back to rural Arizona. Lily’s relationship with her equally headstrong but less practical daughter Rosemary—who grows up to be Wall’s mother—becomes increasingly prickly. To the end Lily is one tough bird.
Like her grandmother, Walls knows how to tell a story with love and grit.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-8628-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
As authoritative and compelling as Mary Renault’s renowned novels set in the ancient world. One hopes we may learn more...
The fourth century BCE comes eccentrically alive in this award-winning debut historical novel from a Canadian short story writer (The Best Thing for You, 2004, etc.).
Given the subtitle, it risks hubris from the outset, as the noted philosopher (who narrates) describes his journey from Athens (accompanied by his young wife Pythias and “apprentice” Callisthenes) to Macedon, at the imperious request of King Philip of Macedon. The two had been friends as boys, when Aristotle’s father was physician to Philip’s father the king, but have grown apart in every imaginable way. The philosopher’s beloved Athens is only a pale shadow of the glory that was Greece, and Philip’s royal city Pella is the base for an empire expanded by perpetual conquest. Aristotle has been enlisted to tutor Philip’s younger son Alexander, the quick-witted, energetic and temperamental heir to his father’s dream of unlimited aggrandizement. But before this impressively researched, vividly detailed novel settles into a contest of wits and wills between determined teacher and often unmanageable student, Lyon builds a fascinating portrait of the Athenian sage. While insisting that empirical evidence must be amassed and comprehended before theories can be formed, and preaching the need to find a middle ground (or “golden mean”) between any and all extremes, this Aristotle is revealed as a sensualist gratified and enthralled by the world’s often inexplicable plenitude, whether he’s interpreting tragic drama or examining feces or pondering the movements of celestial bodies; demonstrating his emphatically earthbound affection for the bewitching Pythias; or awakening the potential for rationality in Alexander’s seemingly retarded older brother Arrhidaeus (perhaps the novel’s most sympathetic character). In her most daring leap, Lyon examines with perfect tact and logic infrequently scrutinized evidence that suggests that this master of analysis and reason may have been clinically bipolar.
As authoritative and compelling as Mary Renault’s renowned novels set in the ancient world. One hopes we may learn more about Lyon’s immeasurably brilliant, unflappably human Aristotle.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-59399-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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