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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
CIRCLE OF DAYS
by Ken Follett

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ARMOR OF LIGHT
by Ken Follett

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER
by Ken Follett

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WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

by Susan Crandall ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2013

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

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Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.

Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

Pub Date: July 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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HOME

by Toni Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2012

At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...

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A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.

At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.