A clever, sprightly tale, whether it’s set in, atop, or near the ocean.
In Brown’s (Snowmen, 1991, etc.) thriller, a man who can envision the locations of shipwrecks searches for treasure while dealing with Russians and an oil tycoon.
Kyle Dawton has had odd episodes of apparent precognition since childhood, but only a few have turned out to be accurate. He uses his ability to sense the locations of sunken vessels for Argos Salvage, which he owns and runs with his buddy, former SEAL Wayne Chizzick. Still, the company is in the red, so its chairman, ex-admiral Curt Chizzick, brings in investor Bill Cooper, whose daughter, Victoria, comes onboard as a new partner. She’s an archaeologist with her own team who aims to use the company’s resources to find valuable historical sites. Kyle’s latest vision, which seems to involve ghosts and a mermaid, also hints at another wreck (and possibly treasure). His “hunch” takes the crew to the Bermuda Triangle, which they find to be surprisingly crowded. The Russian military is in the area to find and return defector Pyotr Telasnikov, but the reasons why they want him aren’t immediately revealed. At the same time, the salvage team gets too close to oil well sites that were capped after an accident; JJ Oil CEO James Jessup Harwood III claims that he simply wishes them to stay capped, but he may have other motivations for having the team keep their distance. Brown keeps the story’s supernatural element ambiguous and sublimely understated; Kyle, for example, isn’t certain whether his vision of a ship going down during a storm is a past or future event—or perhaps both. Furthermore, the book grounds his ability in reality, implying that Kyle might be hallucinating from diving too deeply and experiencing nitrogen narcosis, which he’s endured twice before. There’s a plethora of characters in the novel, including pirates and hijackers, but thankfully, it’s easy to keep track of them all. There’s a bit of mystery, too: the Russians have to identify Telasnikov first before snatching him, and supposedly have a mole at JJ Oil. Brown sufficiently describes scenes set underwater and onboard vessels, but he shines brightest with his nautical-inspired metaphors; for instance, an irate Wayne “stomped the decks like peg-legged Ahab pacing The Pequod.”
A clever, sprightly tale, whether it’s set in, atop, or near the ocean.Pub Date: July 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4951-6764-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Star Peak Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A bold but flawed debut novel.
There’s a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).
The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. “Where but in medicine,” he asks, “might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?” The question is key, revealing Verghese’s intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys’ Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it’s no surprise he’ll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.
A bold but flawed debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-41449-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It”...
Queen of the summer novel—how could she not be, with all her stories set on an island—Hilderbrand delivers a beguiling ninth (The Castaways, 2009, etc.), featuring romance and mystery on isolated Tuckernuck Island.
The Tate family has had a house on Tuckernuck (just off the coast of swanky Nantucket) for generations. It has been empty for years, but now Birdie wants to spend a quiet mother-daughter week there with Chess before Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan. Then the unthinkable happens—perfect Chess (beautiful, rich, well-bred food editor of Glamorous Home) dumps the equally perfect Michael. She quits her job, leaves her New York apartment for Birdie’s home in New Canaan, and all without explanation. Then the unraveling continues: Michael dies in a rock-climbing accident, leaving Chess not quite a widow, but devastated, guilty, unreachable in the shell of herself. Birdie invites her younger daughter Tate (a pretty, naïve computer genius) and her own bohemian sister India, whose husband, world-renowned sculptor Bill Bishop, killed himself years ago, to Tuckernuck for the month of July, in the hopes that the three of them can break through to Chess. Hunky Barrett Lee is their caretaker, coming from Nantucket twice a day to bring groceries and take away laundry (idyllic Tuckernuck is remote—no phone, no hot water, no ferry) as he’s also inspiring renewed lust in Tate, who has had a crush on him since she was a kid. The author jumps between the four women—Tate and her blossoming relationship with Barrett, India and her relationship with Lula Simpson, a painter at the Academy where India is a curator, Birdie, who is surprised by the recent kindnesses of ex-husband Grant, and finally Chess, who in her journal is uncoiling the sordid, sad circumstances of her break with normal life and Michael’s death.
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It” beach book of the summer.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04387-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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