A noble effort from Ganly, whose next installment, set in the 20th century, might benefit from a tighter narrative focus and...
Ganly’s (Data Sources for Business and Market Analysis: 4th Ed., 1994) fiction debut traces the myriad highs and lows of an Irish family throughout the last half of the 19th century.
Opening with a journey to America, Ganly’s sprawling saga covers the lives of the Clinton family from 1850 to 1899. In lieu of a single, main story, however, the novel overflows with subplots that touch on such themes as marriage, faithfulness, performing arts, politics and even serial murder. The Clinton clan includes Lawrence, a talented portraitist coming to terms with his homosexuality; Eva, a lauded stage actress determined to fight for Irish rights; Claire, a nun who’s wrestling with the restrictions of her religious vows; and many more. In addition to the Clinton family’s core members and their inner circle, cameos abound from such historical figures as William “Boss” Tweed, Oscar Wilde and Sigmund Freud (a man with “fascinating” eyes who looks “more like a musician than a physician”). Although the action bounces primarily between Ireland, London and New York, there are also brief sojourns to Russia, Australia and Africa that shake things up. As the former assistant director of the New York Public Library, Ganly exhibits admirable ambition and an encyclopedic knowledge of the time period. At more than 600 pages, however, the novel seems overstuffed and distracted. The prose, for example, often seems overly preoccupied with explaining things, such as characters’ motivations, even if those explanations aren’t particularly intriguing: “Sean began to experience the happiness lost to him, and the chance to act and be part of Cora’s life filled him with joy.” The Clintons also all share the same stilted way of speaking, which robs some scenes of the emotional impact they ought to have. When two characters break up, for instance, their conversation is stiff and unrealistic: “I can see no future in our relationship. The love I have for you is a treasure that will last me a lifetime….We part as friends with good memories.”
A noble effort from Ganly, whose next installment, set in the 20th century, might benefit from a tighter narrative focus and deeper characterization.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1482559484
Page Count: 624
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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