A stirring homage to, and critique of, an ever changing United States.
A sprawling debut historical novel about a family that grapples with war and political tumult.
Henry Rosenberg and his wife, Augusta, are pacifists on Christian grounds, but he still feels obligated to join the Union Army in 1864, even though he’s old enough to avoid conscription. Augusta loathes Abraham Lincoln almost as much as war itself and feels betrayed by her husband’s decision. Henry eventually returns after witnessing the grisly horror of combat. His experience haunts successive generations of his family, as his descendants also wrestle with the moral conundrums presented by war. Henry’s daughter, also named Augusta, has a similar rift with her husband, John Helden, over the country’s entry into World War I. This pattern of familial struggle continues all the way through World War II, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf War. Each time, the family’s ordeal microcosmically mirrors the identity crisis of the nation as a whole, representing evolving attitudes not only about America’s place in the world, but also about women, commerce, and the social fabric itself. Author Heil structures the plot around war but also includes dramatic depictions of Prohibition and the impact of socially divisive issues, such as abortion. A finalist in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Competition, this book is an ambitious tour de force. It attempts to do double duty by realistically portraying individual people, as well as the nation at large, over the course of more than a century. Unsurprisingly, the plot meanders sometimes, and the characters get languorously lost in seemingly interminable political debates. These disputes are occasionally cast in tendentious tones, making one side seem hyperbolically unsympathetic. (A debate before an audience over Roe v. Wade, for example, depicted at great length, makes the pro-choice advocate seem shrill and dogmatic.) Even so, the author’s success at capturing the internecine conflict in generations of one expanding family, without reducing them to abstract symbols of larger political referents, is remarkable. Overall, this is a powerful, moving tale, reminiscent of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden in its scope and artistic aspiration.
Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 674
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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