An attractive, briskly paced debut novel by the author of nonfiction studies of medieval merchant guilds—on which Lang (in her first US publication) unobtrusively grounds this lively romance, set in 1377. In the days of the waning Edward III, Joanna Burgeys, daughter of a prominent London mercer (dealer in cloth), is rescued from probable street rape by a knight, Sir Tristram de Maudesbury, retainer to the Duke of Lancaster (the later powerful John of Gaunt). Sir Tristram is a mean-spirited, callous—but divinely handsome—rotter, and Joanna is smitten. She uses her decidedly superior wit (eventually) to trick the rather dense Tristram—who, it turns out, wants Joanna's beautiful sister Mariota for marriage (predictably, a nasty surprise). Yet Joanna is determined to love on. (One of the pleasing features of the novel is Lang's stubborn, cross-witted heroine.) Meanwhile, London—always at the boil politically with the infighting of the guilds, incursions of foreign workers, and delicate balancing of alliances attuned to mayor or monarch—has had to deal with the threat of a Lancaster invasion, and then the Wat Tyler rebellion of peasants. In the midst of the city's turmoil, and the ascendancy of that rather awful boy Richard II, the fortunes of the Burgeys family are affected by (among others) Mariota's rich and sneaky husband and the ``Black Nick,'' an extraordinary sea captain who turns out to be a knight and neighbor of Sir Tristram's. There will be sad and horrible deaths, close escapes, and the terror of the rebellion. (Wisely, Lang does not allow her well-to-do principals any egalitarian sympathies, although Black Nick comes close.) And, of course, Joanna—post-stupidity—finds true love. A delightful historical—and Lang has, first off, thoughtfully provided a long list of characters, real and fictional.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-08871-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
Nothing original, but in Hilderbrand’s hands it’s easy to get lost in the story.
Privileged 30-somethings hide from their woes in Nantucket.
Hilderbrand’s saga follows the lives of Melanie, Brenda and Vicki. Vicki, alpha mom and perfect wife, is battling late-stage lung cancer and, in an uncharacteristically flaky moment, opts for chemotherapy at the beach. Vicki shares ownership of a tiny Nantucket cottage with her younger sister Brenda. Brenda, a literature professor, tags along for the summer, partly out of familial duty, partly because she’s fleeing the fallout from her illicit affair with a student. As for Melanie, she gets a last minute invite from Vicki, after Melanie confides that Melanie’s husband is having an affair. Between Melanie and Brenda, Vicki feels her two young boys should have adequate supervision, but a disastrous first day on the island forces the trio to source some outside help. Enter Josh, the adorable and affable local who is hired to tend to the boys. On break from college, Josh learns about the pitfalls of mature love as he falls for the beauties in the snug abode. Josh likes beer, analysis-free relationships and hot older women. In a word, he’s believable. In addition to a healthy dose of testosterone, the novel is balanced by powerful descriptions of Vicki’s bond with her two boys. Emotions run high as she prepares for death.
Nothing original, but in Hilderbrand’s hands it’s easy to get lost in the story.Pub Date: July 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-316-01858-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
Morrison, in her sixth novel, enters 1926 Harlem, a new black world then ("safe from fays [whites] and the things they think up"), and moves into a love story—with a love that could clear a space from the past, give a life or take one. At 50, Joe Trace—good-looking, faithful to wife Violet, also from Virginia poortimes—suddenly tripped into a passionate affair with Dorcas, 18: "one of those deep-down spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going." Then Violet went to Dorcas's funeral and cut her dead face. But before Joe met Dorcas, and before her death and before Violet, in her torn coat, scoured the neighborhood looking for reasons, looking for her own truer identity, images of the past burned within all three: Violet's mother, tipped out of her chair by the men who took everything away, and her death in a well; for Joe, the hand of the "wild" woman, his mother, that never really found his. And all of the child Dorcas's dolls burned up with her mother and her childhood. Truly, the new music of Harlem—from clicks and taps of pleasure to the thud of betrayed marching black veterans with their frozen faces—"had a complicated anger in it." Were Joe and Violet substitutes for each other, for a need known and unmet? At the close, a new link is forged between them with another Dorcas. One of Morrison's richest novels yet, with its weave of city voices, tough and tender, public and private, and a flight of images that sweep up the world in a heartbeat: the narrator (never identified) contemplates airships in a city sky as they "swim below cloud foam...like watching a private dream....That was what [Dorcas's] hunger was like: mesmerizing, directed, floating like a public secret." In all, a lovely novel—lyrical, searching, and touching.
Pub Date: April 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41167-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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