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EDGE OF ETERNITY

Name: EDGE OF ETERNITY
Author: Ken Follett
ISBN: 978-0-525-95309-8

From the Century Trilogy series , Vol. 3

by Ken Follett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2014

A well-written entertainment, best suited to those who measure their novels in reams instead of signatures.

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Another sprawling, multigenerational, continent-spanning saga from long-practiced pop-fiction writer Follett (Winter of the World, 2012, etc.).

One might forgive the reader for taking Follett’s title literally at first glance; after all, who has time for the eternity of a 1,100-plus–page novel, especially one that’s preceded by a brace of similarly hefty novels? Happily, Follett, while not delivering the edge-of-the-seat tautness of Eye of the Needle (1978), knows how to turn in a robust yarn without too much slack, even in a book as long as this. The latest and last installment in the Century Trilogy spills over into our own time, closing with Barack Obama’s electrifying speech in Chicago on winning his first term as president—an emotional moment, considering the struggle some of Follett’s protagonists have endured to see it happen. His Freedom Riders make plenty of history of their own, risking violence not just for stirring up the disenfranchised, but also for engaging in more personal forms of protest. One, George Jakes, comes near the top of Follett’s dauntingly long dramatis personae (in which more than 100 named characters figure); he’s a crusader for justice and often in fraught places at the times in which he’s most needed. George has his generational counterparts behind the Iron Curtain, some of them pretty good guys despite their Comintern credentials, along with a guitar-slinger from East Germany swept into the toppermost of the poppermost in the decadent West. (“They quickly realized that San Francisco was the coolest city of them all. It was full of young people in radically stylish clothes.”) Follett writes of those young hipsters with a fustiness befitting Michener, and indeed there’s a Michenerian-epic feeling to the whole enterprise, as if The Drifters had gotten mashed up with John le Carré and Pierre Salinger; it’s George Burns in Pepperland stuff. Still, fans of Follett won’t mind, and, knowing all the tricks, he does a good job of tying disparate storylines together in the end.

A well-written entertainment, best suited to those who measure their novels in reams instead of signatures.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-525-95309-8

Page Count: 1120

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ARMOR OF LIGHT
by Ken Follett

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER
by Ken Follett

- BOOK REVIEW
THE EVENING AND THE MORNING
by Ken Follett

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BEHELD

by TaraShea Nesbit ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

A dramatic look at the Pilgrims as seen through women’s eyes.

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Ten years after founding the first Pilgrim settlement, the colonists are forced to address the strife that roils beneath their utopian dreams.

It’s an August morning in the Plymouth colony, the year 1630. It’s been 10 years since a group arrived on the Mayflower to start life afresh, and today is a day of great anticipation: A fresh wave of people is expected to arrive. Alice Bradford, wife of the colony’s governor, William, is especially anxious. On this new ship will be her stepson, the child left behind by William and his first wife, Dorothy, when they undertook the perilous Mayflower journey. Alice remains haunted by Dorothy’s death, which occurred under mysterious circumstances, and feels guilt for having usurped her childhood companion for the powerful role of William Bradford’s wife. But the day is full of anticipation in other ways, too. Nesbit (The Wives of Los Alamos, 2014) uses alternating narrators, chiefly Alice Bradford and Eleanor Billington, the wife of a disgruntled, disillusioned colonist, to show the tension and unrest building among those in charge of the fledgling settlement and those who are chafing against the powerful. A murder will be committed by the time this August day has come to a close, and by the time it does, the settlers will question whether or not they are truly “fashioned in God’s favor,” as they once believed. Although the pacing here can be off-putting (the buildup to the promised disaster is long; the climax, too short) and the sensitively rendered but still peripheral role that the Wampanoag Tribe plays could have used more development, Nesbit’s novel has all the juicy sex, lies, and violence of a prestige Netflix drama and shines surprising light on the earliest years of America, massive warts and all.

A dramatic look at the Pilgrims as seen through women’s eyes.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-63557-322-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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THAT CHURCHILL WOMAN

by Stephanie Barron ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 22, 2019

The story lacks forward momentum other than the passage of time, but the characters are captivating.

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Jennie Jerome made a place for herself in history, rising through the British aristocracy via marriage and breaking social norms with her vivacious personality, fierce independence, and sexual escapades. And then she had a son, Winston Churchill.

Born into an elite New York family, Jennie travels to England in 1873 as a striking 19-year-old and proceeds to attract admiration from men of all stripes. She matches flirtatious chatter easily but is most intrigued by Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill and his stimulating intellectual conversation. After their impulsive marriage, she rises into high society as Randolph enters Parliament. We first meet the adult Jennie at a function at Sandringham. The men, including the Prince of Wales, vie for the honor of seating her at the table, but handsome Count Charles Kinsky makes sure she sits by him and thus begins a flirtation that morphs into more. Barron paints a picture of a beautiful woman with enough determination and animal magnetism to get what she wants, which is her husband’s (and later, her son’s) rise in politics...and the affections of men. Through the narrative, readers will see Jennie, watch her every move, and yet, maybe, not care very much. There is a subtle something lacking that leaves readers as spectators of, rather than vicarious participants in, Jennie’s life.

The story lacks forward momentum other than the passage of time, but the characters are captivating.