An astringent view of crime and punishment, Irish style, as seen through the eyes of a grieving father who’s coming unraveled. Billy Sweeney, a salesman burdened by a long record of failures and disappointments, including an unsatisfying career and a now-empty marriage, finally finds something on which to focus his frustrated energies. Four thugs have beaten his daughter, the most outspoken and resilient of his grown children, into a coma. While one bully’s been taken into custody, another—Donal Quinn—escapes, disappearing into the seedy back-streets of Dublin. Sweeney decides that since the law has failed so spectacularly to secure justice, he’ll finish the job himself, tracking Quinn down and killing him. The narrative consists of Sweeney’s journals; he compulsively sets down every detail of his search, as well as lengthy recollections of his early life, children, and marriage. And he addresses the journals to his stricken daughter: they serve both to justify his actions and to explore, for her benefit and his own, the seemingly mysterious ways in which his life has gone wrong. Along the way, O’Connor, novelist (Cowboys and Indians, 1992, etc.) and acerbic commentator (Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America, 1996, etc.), also weaves into the narrative a sharp, unsparing reflection on modern Ireland. The Dublin through which Sweeney moves is a rather anarchic place: family bonds count for far more than the law, and violent men still rule. His pursuit of Quinn brings him into contact with a violent underworld, and his stubborn persistence in his search precipitates a violent ending. O’Connor manages to keep the specifics fresh in what might otherwise seem a routine tale: Sweeney develops rather complex feelings about Quinn in learning more about his damaged life. And there’s a nice play of unforced symbolism here. Sweeney’s an Irish Everyman. His quest echoes, mordantly, that of Joyce’s Ulysses. A deft, often angry, and moving portrait of the complexities of loss and vengeance. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-19998-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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