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THE SECRET YEARS

Name: THE SECRET YEARS
Author: Judith Lennox
ISBN: 0-312-13166-6

by Judith Lennox ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1995

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More literate and entertaining soap from the author of The Italian Garden (1993), etc., this time in a fifth novel set in the British fenlands east of Cambridge. When Lady Gwendoline Blythe returns home to her country estate in Drakesden, she discovers her teenaged children, Nicholas and his younger sister, Lally, consorting with Thomasine Thorne, the orphaned daughter of missionaries, and Daniel Gillory, the blacksmith's son. Furious, Lady Blythe sets off events that will alter all of their lives—and, of course, since it's the summer of 1914, that favored time for British romance writers, the war will make alterations of its own. Fifteen-year-old Daniel is denied an education, runs off to London, enlists, and is wounded; Nicholas mutilates himself after seeing the rest of his company slaughtered, then, shell-shocked, returns to England; Thomasine, the feisty redhaired heroine here, becomes a dancer; and Lally, who had further incensed her mother by stealing a family heirloom, is sent to boarding school, where she'll eventually contract TB. After the war, Thomasine, pregnant and abandoned, marries Nicholas in Paris. Daniel marries a woman named Fay and moves her to his small farm in Drakesden, and Lally sleeps around. Daniel warns Nicholas that the Drakesden dikes are in danger of breaking—a foreshadowing of the end—while it's also clear that after much teeth gnashing Daniel and Thomasine will get together, since they've married the worst possible people. Meanwhile, Nicholas won't make love to Thomasine and cuts himself with razor blades; Fay hates the fens; and after the flood, Daniel and Thomasine build a home on the high ground, and are ready to survive the rest of the 20th century. Loose ends are rushed to a resolution here, but, once again, Lennox animates accurate historical detail with an inventive imagination and a strong attention to place.

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-312-13166-6

Page Count: 608

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE QUILTMAKER'S GIFT

by Jeff Brumbeau ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999

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A sentimental tale overwhelmed by busy illustrations and rampant pedantry. A gifted quiltmaker who makes outstanding quilts never sells her wares, but gives them away to the poor. A greedy king so loves presents that he has two birthdays a year, and commands everyone in the kingdom to give him gifts. Everyone brings presents till the castle overflows; the king, still unhappy, locates the quiltmaker and directs her to make him a quilt. When she refuses he tries to feed her to a hungry bear, then to leave her on a tiny island, but each time the quiltmaker’s kindness results in her rescue. At last, the king agrees to a bargain; he will give away his many things, and the quiltmaker will sew him a quilt. He is soon poor, but happier than he’s ever been, and she fulfills her end of the bargain; they remain partners forever after, with her sewing the quilts and him giving them away. The illustrations are elaborate, filled with clues to quilt names. A note points to the 250 different quilt names hidden in the picture on the inside of the book jacket. (Picture book. 6-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999

ISBN: 1-57025-199-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY

by Walter Mosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2010

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s...

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An ancient man living in solitary squalor in Los Angeles is offered an experimental medicine that just might beat back his creeping dementia—and will almost certainly kill him in the process.

At 91, Ptolemy Grey has outlived everyone he ever cared for. His uncle and mentor, Coydog McCann, was lynched back in Mississippi when Li’l Pea was only a child; his much younger wife, Sensia Howard, had a fatal stroke 22 years ago; and as his story opens, he’s summoned to the side of his much-loved son Reggie, his last link with the outside world, killed in a drive-by shooting. Unable to get services from the landlord who’s frustrated that he can’t raise the rent and afraid to go out alone lest he run into Melinda Hogarth, the crazy addict who keeps mugging him, Ptolemy lives amid an unending flood of uncontrolled memories and associations that render his mind as unusable as his clogged toilet. But his life turns around when he meets Robyn Small at Reggie’s wake. An orphan taken in by Ptolemy’s niece Niecie, Robyn has already, at 17, lived through as tempestuous a life as Ptolemy. But she’s emerged from its vicissitudes clear-eyed, tough-minded and eager to help the old man who claims her as a daughter. She cleans and fumigates his reeking apartment, sets up a bank account for the cash he’s socked away and takes him to see Dr. Bryant Ruben, the satanic physician who offers Ptolemy a medical therapy unapproved by the FDA that may improve his memory and his cognition, but at a high price. Robyn is shocked and repelled, but Ptolemy, who’s named after Cleopatra’s father, is eager to get something like his old life back.

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s cacophony of memories into a powerful symphony that makes him “into many men from out of all the lives he had lived through the decades.”