An entertaining historical soap opera.
Follett continues the trilogy begun with Fall of Giants (2010) with a novel that ranges across continents and family trees.
It makes sense that Follett would open with an impending clash, since, after all, it’s Germany in 1933, when people are screaming about why the economy is so bad and why there are so many foreigners on the nation’s streets. The clash in question, though, is a squabble between journalist Maud von Ulrich, née Lady Maud Fitzherbert—no thinking of Brigitte Jones here—and hubby Walter, a parliamentarian headed for stormy times. Follett’s big project, it seems, is to reduce the bloody 20th century to a family saga worthy of a James Michener, and, if the writing is less fluent than that master’s, he succeeds. Scrupulous in giving characters major and minor plenty of room to roam on the stage, Follett extends the genealogy of the families introduced in the first volume, taking into account the twists and turns of history: If Grigori Peshkov was a hero of the Bolshevik Revolution, his son Volodya is a dutiful soldier of the Stalin regime—dutiful, but not slavishly loyal. Indeed, most of the progeny here spend at least some of the time correcting the mistakes of their parents’ generation: Carla von Ulrich becomes a homegrown freedom fighter in Germany, which will have cliffhanger-ish implications at the very end of this installment, while Lloyd Williams, son of a parliamentarian across the Channel, struggles against both fascism and communism on the front in the Spanish Civil War. (Lloyd’s a perspicacious chap; after all, even George Orwell needed time and distance from the war to gain that perspective.) Aside from too-frequent, intrusive moments of fourth-wall-breaking didacticism—“Supplying weaponry was the main role played by the British in the French resistance”—Follett’s storytelling is unobtrusive and workmanlike, and he spins a reasonable and readable yarn that embraces dozens of characters and plenty of Big Picture history, with real historical figures bowing in now and then. Will one of them be Checkers, Richard Nixon’s dog, in volume 3? Stay tuned.
An entertaining historical soap opera.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95292-3
Page Count: 960
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Mother-daughter relationships with add-ons as debut novelist Chai expands to varying effect this trendy genre by including lessons on recent Philippine history. Like her 30ish protagonist Caridad, Chai (who was born in Manila) has Chinese parents and a cultural heritage that is as much Chinese as Spanish and Filipino—a heritage that makes for a pleasingly textured novel, though at times the insertion of local color seems forced. Now living in Australia with her daughter, and temporarily estranged from husband Jaime, Caridad is summoned home to Manila by a letter from her mother. Once there, she is drawn back into the lives and secrets of Thelma, her mother; her aunt Emma; and Ligaya, her oldest cousin. With a certain amount of foreshadowing and numerous richly detailed detours into local history, including an account of the Japanese Occupation, Caridad learns the truth about her parentage. Thelma recalls her marriage to Raoul, the only son of an affluent Chinese family who expected her to live with them and bear many sons; the infant Raoul brought home with tragic consequences; the changes in their marriage; and the decision she made and never regretted in the first year after the war. Emma, meanwhile, recalls her happy marriage to Alfonso; the birth of their many children; the privations and horror of the Japanese Occupation; and the early death of Alfonso, a loss that had many repercussions. Ligaya adds her own personal memories, as well as her reasons for not marrying for love; and Caridad, as she travels back and forth among the women, finally understands her past and herself. Realizing ``that I had so much. . . . I had been given so much,'' she goes back to try reconciliation with Jaime. A thin, less-than-riveting plot enhanced by graceful prose and a generously—at times too generously—evoked sense of place and period: a flawed but promising first outing.
Pub Date: July 4, 1996
ISBN: 0-449-91068-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
Give first-time novelist Petersen credit: Not many would have thought of exploring the hard lives of a farm family through the eyes of a dairy herd. And even fewer could have sustained the conceit as successfully as Petersen does. In his version of barnyard life, the cows are as varied in their tastes and interests as their owners and, on average, as intelligent. They listen to what Farmer Bob, his wife and children, and hired hand say; they gather news from overheard radio broadcasts; and they speculate about the world outside their pastures. Most of all, they worry. Bob is increasingly distant and harried—and with good reason: His son, Gerry, is anxious to leave the farm for good. Moreover, Gerry's future is further complicated by the fact that it's 1969, the Vietnam War is in furious progress, and he's likely to be drafted. Meanwhile, Bob's teenaged daughter Renee is discovering just how limited life on the farm can be—and how unpleasantly archaic. There are other problems, too: Bob, who has stubbornly opposed mechanization, sees his profits slipping, and the local power company is planning to take part of his pasture. Several of the cows take turns narrating the action, their voices interwoven with those of Bob and his family. The venerable Bossy wonders whether ``it is more important that we do what humans want, or that we live according to our beliefs?'' Poor doomed Calvin, convinced that he's been called to serve as cowkind's ambassador to humans, attempts to communicate with Bob. And the mystic Aretha, who can see the future, rallies the cows in the novel's most startling scene to offer Bob some small glimpse of their real life. Petersen's fabulistic evocation of cows is wonderfully detailed and moving: Their rituals, beliefs, troubled grasp of the world are all vivid and convincing. But their sheer strange reality doesn't always jibe with the domestic drama of Bob's family. Still, this is one of the most original and promising of recent debuts.
Pub Date: June 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14302-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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