Rhodes (Voodoo Dreams, 1993, etc.) eloquently describes the women’s shabby treatment, and yet the effect overall fails as a...
A vivid evocation of the two women, one black, one white, who loved—and lost—abolitionist Frederick Douglass, in a tale that for all its good feminist intentions is more descriptive than insightful.
Lavish with details of dress and place, the story tells about freewoman Anna Murray, whom Douglass once referred to as the “old black log” he was married to, and Ottilie Assing, a German-born artist who fell in love with Douglass. When Anna, working for a Baltimore household, saw Douglass in the harbor in 1835, she fell in love. Older than he, stocky in build, illiterate, and dark-skinned, she had two things that Douglass desperately needed: belief in him—and money. They became lovers, and she helped him flee Baltimore, disguised as a free sailor bound for New York, where she later joined him, pregnant with their first child. They married, but the result was never to be the home-centered relationship Anna had envisaged; Douglass traveled widely, and then, fleeing his would-be captors, went to England with the beautiful and idealistic Ottilie, who became his personal assistant and lover, “the wife of his spirit.” As Douglass became famous, Anna, aware of the affair with Ottilie, was often alone as she bore more children, moved frequently, and survived a fire set by pro-slavers. Home and family were a consolation to her, but the lonely Ottilie didn’t have even that. Still, when she died, in 1882, Anna was comforted only by memories of a daughter who died in childhood, and the equally neglected Ottilie, having failed to persuade Douglass to join her in Paris, and hurt by his marriage to a young white woman, saw little point in living either.
Rhodes (Voodoo Dreams, 1993, etc.) eloquently describes the women’s shabby treatment, and yet the effect overall fails as a persuasive indictment of a man who never gets to make his own case.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-1009-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her...
Avery Stafford, a lawyer, descendant of two prominent Southern families and daughter of a distinguished senator, discovers a family secret that alters her perspective on heritage.
Wingate (Sisters, 2016, etc.) shifts the story in her latest novel between present and past as Avery uncovers evidence that her Grandma Judy was a victim of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and is related to a woman Avery and her father meet when he visits a nursing home. Although Avery is living at home to help her parents through her father’s cancer treatment, she is also being groomed for her own political career. Readers learn that investigating her family’s past is not part of Avery's scripted existence, but Wingate's attempts to make her seem torn about this are never fully developed, and descriptions of her chemistry with a man she meets as she's searching are also unconvincing. Sections describing the real-life orphanage director Georgia Tann, who stole poor children, mistreated them, and placed them for adoption with wealthy clients—including Joan Crawford and June Allyson—are more vivid, as are passages about Grandma Judy and her siblings. Wingate’s fans and readers who enjoy family dramas will find enough to entertain them, and book clubs may enjoy dissecting the relationship and historical issues in the book.
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her fictional characters' lives.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28468-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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