A sweeping planter-slave tale in the antebellum South, as seen through the prism of 21st-century sensibilities and...
A Civil War–era historical saga that chronicles a couple as they go from Cumberland Island, Georgia, to Groton, Connecticut, by 2011 Georgia Author of the Year McCash (Almost to Eden, 2010).
In antebellum Georgia, beautiful Elisabeth (aka “Zabette”) is the descendant of generations of slave owners and comely slaves. Raised primarily by her white grandmother, French-American Marguerite Bernardey, Zabette straddles the two lifestyles. Aware of her granddaughter’s delicate position, Marguerite exacts a promise from her white neighbor, Robert Stafford, that he’ll prevent Zabette from being sold after her death. Indeed, Stafford takes Zabette into his home to live there as his wife, long before her grandmother dies. A successful planter and businessman, he refuses to allow their six children to be raised as slaves, instead sending them to Connecticut where they can pass as white and live as free people. Eventually, Zabette joins them, while Robert remains in the South, growing increasingly bitter over his inability to possess all of Cumberland Island. Later, when his Southern fortunes are decimated by the Civil War, he allows his disappointment to cloud his relationship with Zabette. This novel transcends what could have been a clichéd tale of a master/slave affair, instead showing the truly tenuous position of African-Americans in the South before and after the war. McCash shows how Zabette’s intelligence and devotion to her children cause her to question Robert’s decisions, and how her long residence in the North educates her on issues that her upbringing never made her think about. In contrast, Robert evolves from a socially awkward, sympathetic character to a heartless, autocratic father to a sad, embittered old man. His deep resentment of the neighboring Cumberland Island planter, Phineas Nightingale, seems unwarranted, and his eventual cruelty toward Zabette inexcusable. Minor inconsistencies in the timeline—Robert is 69 in 1851, but only 67 in 1858—and a lack of character development among Zabette’s younger three children only slightly mar this otherwise well-composed novel.
A sweeping planter-slave tale in the antebellum South, as seen through the prism of 21st-century sensibilities and sensitivities.Pub Date: April 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9844354-8-7
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Twin Oaks Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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