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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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