by John Banville ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2012
Banville writes beautiful sentences, while recognizing the limits and deceptions of language, in a meditation on themes that...
A novel that traps the reader inside the mind of the narrator, a reflective but not very perceptive actor, as his self-absorption turns from the human condition, the passage of time and the creative memory to, obsessively, his teenage sexual initiation with the mother of his best friend.
One’s appreciation of the latest from the award-winning Banville (The Sea, 2005, etc.) largely depends on patience with the protagonist, for the entire novel takes place inside his mind, a mind prone to distortions of memory and little insight into anyone, least of all himself. For Alexander Cleave, a semiretired stage actor improbably cast as the lead in a film (a bio flick portentously titled The Invention of the Past), “the past seems a puzzle from which the most vital pieces are missing.” A half-century earlier, when he was 15, he had a summer-long affair with his friend’s mother, Mrs. Gray. He seems to have little idea how it started, why it persisted and whether the two of them were even particularly attracted to each other. She had just marked her 35th birthday and had lost a baby, though the narrative mentions these only in passing. It would undoubtedly be a very different novel if Mrs. Gray were the protagonist, a narrative which Alexander might not even recognize as his own life. “I do not know what anyone thinks; I hardly know what I think myself,” he admits. He and his wife (who barely figures in the novel) seem like little more than strangers to each other, their relationship irrevocably damaged by the suicide of their mentally disturbed daughter a decade earlier. His debut film experience weaves together various strands from his life and memory, yet he remains (as do we all?) “a Crusoe shipwrecked and stranded in the limitless wastes of a boundless and indifferent ocean.”
Banville writes beautiful sentences, while recognizing the limits and deceptions of language, in a meditation on themes that he has better explored elsewhere.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95705-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018
A tour de force.
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New York Times Bestseller
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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